TEXT:  RESURRECTION DAY
  A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
  
  Table of Contents
  RESURRECTION DAY.....................................................................................................................................1
  A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson......................................................................................1
  Chapter 1. THE COMING MIRACLE....................................................................................................1
  Chapter 2. THE MIRACLE WAS REAL!..............................................................................................6
  Chapter 3. SCHEMES...........................................................................................................................12
  Chapter 4. CARSON ALEXANDER OLMAN.....................................................................................16
  Chapter 5. MASTER PLOTTER...........................................................................................................21
  Chapter 6. WISDOM.............................................................................................................................26
  Chapter 7. THE MUMMY SWAPPERS...............................................................................................33
  Chapter 8. RESURRECTION!..............................................................................................................40
  Chapter 9. THE STRANGE MUMMY MAN.......................................................................................45
  Chapter 10. THE PIRATE PHARAOH.................................................................................................51
  Chapter 11. AIR FANGS.......................................................................................................................55
  Chapter 12. BLACK MOUNTAINS.....................................................................................................60
  Chapter 13. THE DEVIL OF THE DESERT........................................................................................64
  Chapter 14. CROOKED TWO..............................................................................................................69
  Chapter 15. TOMB TRAP.....................................................................................................................76
  Chapter 16. THB SLY MUMMY MAN................................................................................................81
  Chapter 17. THE FIGHT IN THE TOMB.............................................................................................86
  Chapter 18. WATER..............................................................................................................................91
   RESURRECTION DAY
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  RESURRECTION DAY
  A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  http://www.blackmask.com
  Chapter 1. THE COMING MIRACLE
  • 
  Chapter 2. THE MIRACLE WAS REAL!
  • 
  Chapter 3. SCHEMES
  • 
  Chapter 4. CARSON ALEXANDER OLMAN
  • 
  Chapter 5. MASTER PLOTTER
  • 
  Chapter 6. WISDOM
  • 
  Chapter 7. THE MUMMY SWAPPERS
  • 
  Chapter 8. RESURRECTION!
  • 
  Chapter 9. THE STRANGE MUMMY MAN
  • 
  Chapter 10. THE PIRATE PHARAOH
  • 
  Chapter 11. AIR FANGS
  • 
  Chapter 12. BLACK MOUNTAINS
  • 
  Chapter 13. THE DEVIL OF THE DESERT
  • 
  Chapter 14. CROOKED TWO
  • 
  Chapter 15. TOMB TRAP
  • 
  Chapter 16. THB SLY MUMMY MAN
  • 
  Chapter 17. THE FIGHT IN THE TOMB
  • 
  Chapter 18. WATER
  • 
  Chapter 1. THE COMING MIRACLE
  IT just happened that General Ino was the first man who saw a  truckload of policemen stop in front of the
  skyscraper which housed Doc  Savage's New York headqtiarters. The general would have read about it  in his
  newspaper, along with the rest of the world, a bit later, no  doubt. But by seeing the truckload of policemen
  arrive. he got in on  the ground floor, in a manner of speaking. 
  The general stopped to watch. He was interested in what the  policemen had on their truck heavy lumber
  posts, barbed wire, and a keg  of staples. 
  The general had a vocational interest in policemen, anyway, having  spent many of his waking hours, as well
  as manv hours taken from his  sleeping time, in figuring out ways of keeping out of their clutches. 
  The policemen began unloading their posts. timbers and barbed wire.  The orncer in charge gestured and
  called orders. General Ino's jaw  dropped in astonishment. The cops were going to build a barbed−wire
  barricade acrossone of the busiest streets in New York City! 
  General Ino crowded around with some other curious people who had  stopped. The general was not afraid of
  cops. Not for nothing had he  stayed awake nights, for he could  walk New York streets undisguised  and −
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  practically − unafraid. 
  There was a commotion at the other end of the block, and another  truckload of policemen and the makings of
  a barbed−wire barricade came  to a stop near the giant skyscrapers. 
  It was true that General Ino had thus far operated in Egypt, Italy,  Japan and elsewhere.  Places far from
  NewYork, but places where they  have rich men. Particularly rich are the new merchant princes of Japan.  One
  of them had paid a quarter of a million yen ransom for his son, his  only man−child. 
  More trucks were arriving. It seemed that the entire block was  going to be barricaded. That meant the
  building, really. The building  was a block square and taller than ihe length of the longest ocean  liner in the
  world. 
  General Ino had killed the Japanese merchant prince's man−child,  but the merchant prince didn't know that
  before the ransom was paid.  Didn't know it yet, in fact. Years later, the general had thought he  might work off
  some phony brat as the man−child. He had kept the baby  clothes of the man−child and the bit of jewelry it
  had worn. 
  There was quite a hullabaloo now, with the policemen stopping  traffic and beginning to build their
  barbed−wire fences across the most  teeming streets in a city noted for its traffic. 
  General Ino had played the races. That took money. He had  practically kept himself a harem. That took more
  money. Moreover, he  had kept his old organization of crooks and killers intact. That took  the most money of
  all. In that organization he believed he had some of  the coldest, slickest crooks alive. 
  The general had once added up the rewards hanging over the heads of  his organization members. The total
  had stunned him. But it was an  asset which he hadn't yet been able to think out a method of cashing in  on. 
  For General Ino was about broke. All ripe for one of the fabulously  big, cleverly planned, cunningly executed
  hauls which was the only kind  he touched. 
  General Ino walked over to the nearest policeman. 
  "M'sieu' Gendarme," he said, "could you tell me why all thees ees  happen?" 
  The general could fake almost any accent. He loved to. 
  THE cop had come from a long line of brick−throwing ancestors, and  his grin was big. 
  "Your guess is as good as mine, Frenchy." The officer jerked a  thumb upward. "The powers that be say fence
  in the streets around here;  so fence 'em in we will." 
  "But, m 'sieu', some reason you 'ave give thees people why you not  let zem pas', no?" 
  "This is the only reason we have to give 'em." The cop tapped his  badge. 
  "Velly stlange," said  the general,  singsonging.  "Velly stlange." 
  The cop watched him walk off, then scratched his head. 
  "Dang me," he grunted. "First he's a frog, then he's a laundryman!" 
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  The general was at that moment also much the master of evil − and  profitable − schemes,  He  went  directly  to
  the offices of Proudman  Shaster. 
  Proudman Shaster gave his visitor a dry smile and a dried−up hand,  then went back behind his huge desk and
  sat down. The result was that  Proudman Shaster about disappeared. Only his bulging melon of a head  showed
  over the formidable desk. 
  Proudman Shaster's head was all that counted, anyway. It was full  of brains and all the ideas they hatched
  were bad. 
  "It's really a wonderful day," he said. "Really wonderful."  Proudman Shaster was a well−known attorney. and
  everything was usually  "really wonderful" with him. It was a small habit of speech he had. 
  "Si, si, senor," said the general, imitating a Spaniard. "Look, I  have an idea. A mucho bueno idea! I want it
  looked into." 
  Proudman Shaster folded his dry hands and looked as if he hadn't  heard a word of it. 
  "I want all of mv men assemblcd here in New York at once," said  General Ino. "All of my hombres,
  understand!" 
  "Can do," Proudman Shaster admitted, lighting a cigarette. 
  He should have been able to d it. He was Ino's mouth, his eyes, his  ears, even a wee bit of his brains, when
  the occasion demanded. He had  furnished the acid that had disposed of the last bit of epidermis of  the
  Japanese merchant prince's man−child. 
  General Ino shook hands with himself, Chinese fashion, and  murmured, "This humble one is most proud of
  such a worthy servant." 
  Proudman Shaster looked at his finger nails, found grime under one  and began to clean it with a small, sharp
  tooth. 
  "Who are we going to take to the cleaners now?" he asked. 
  "Doc Savage," General Ino said. 
  Proudman Shaster gave a violent leap, closed his eyes, and seemed  to stop breathing. He dropped his
  cigarette. 
  GENERAL INO was plainly quite amused by the actions of his  lieutenant − not his most valuable one,
  incidentally.  Ino smiled,  picked up the cigarette stub and extinguished it in a bronze tray. 
  "Oh, don't worry, I knew you'd be quite surprised," he said. 
  Proudman Shaster went through some convulsive facial expressions. 
  "Water!" be gasped faintly. "And one of the pills out of the box on  the water cooler!" 
  General Ino seemed about to laugh, as if it were a good bit of  acting; then be peered closely at his follower.
  He ran to the cooler,  got the water and pill, then administered both to Proudman Shaster. 
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  "Don't you know I have a weak heart?" were Shaster's first words. 
  "I never expected merely mentioning a name would kill you off," Ino  told him. 
  Shaster got up shakily, helped himself to more water and another  pill, and topped it off with a drink from a
  brown bottle with a black  label. He looked closely at his chief. 
  "Look here!" he said grimly. "Don't you know about this Doc  Savage?" 
  General Ino said, "It is not my habit to go into things half  baked." 
  "You'll come out of this one with your goose cooked," said Proudman  Shaster. "Doc Savage is one of the
  most dangerous men in the world to  meddle with." 
  "A reputation," murmured General Ino, "is like a snowball." 
  "Doc Savage is a man who was taken by his parents at birth and  trained intensively and scientifically to
  become a catcher of crooks  and a righter of wrongs," explained Shaster. 
  "The snowball," continued General Ino, "starts off as a little  ball, but grows until it becomes as big as hell." 
  "Doc Savage is a scientific genius, a mental wizard, and as strong  as the Bull of Bashan!" snapped Shaster. 
  "The snowball gets big because it rolls down the hill," Ino  reminded. 
  "Doc Savage is not entirely human. Everybody, almost, has heard  about him. His business is righting wrongs,
  aiding the oppressed, and  sort of putting the kibosh on crooked schemes." 
  "Nature put the hill there," General Ino pointed out. 
  "Every crook alive, when he hears about Doc Savage, crosses his  fingers and hopes the Man of Bronze − they
  call Savage that sometimes −  will not get on his trail." 
  "A little shove starts the snowball. After that it grows by  itself." 
  "Doc Savage alone is bad enough," groaned Proudman Shaster. "But he  also has five assistants. One of them
  I have personally seen in action.  He is a lawyer named Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, and  those
  who are not afraid call him Ham. Not many people call him Ham." 
  "As I have been saying," said General Ino, "it does not take much  to make a big snowball." 
  "HAM almost got me disbarred once," moaned Shaster. "He is the  cleverest lawyer I ever saw. Doc Savage's
  other aids are equally clever  in their lines. One is said to be an engineer, another a chemist, a  third an
  archaeologist, and the fourth an electrical wizard." 
  "Reputations are like snowballs," declared Ino. 
  "Doc Savage is the master of any of his aids in his respective  line, incredible as it seems, according to
  reports." 
  "A big reputation can grow out of a little of nothing," Tno  reminded. 
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  Shaster snapped, "I would rather commit suicide than tackle Doc  Savage!" 
  General Ino calmly drew a revolver out of his coat pocket and laid  it on the desk. 
  "Then you'd better shoot yourself," he said. He pressed a small  catch on one of his cuff links and it flew open.
  A whitish−looking  powder fell out on the desk top. "Or touch your tongue to that. It's  potassium cyanide of a
  newer and more lethal type." 
  Proudman Shaster gulped, "But I don't understand!" 
  "Well, we are going to tackle Doc Savage," General Ino told him.  "Doc Savage is a man after my style. He
  goes after big things." 
  "And little ones, too, I've heard," Shaster put in. "They say he  helps an infinitely greater number of people in
  small ways, but only  his big deeds find their way into the newspapers − " 
  "Then we'll wait for one of his big ones," said General Ino. 
  "I still don't understand what you're driving at," Shaster told him  nervously. 
  "Did you ever see a seagull wait until a pelican had dived, gotten  a fish and come up breathless, then the
  seagull would pounce in and  grab the fish?" 
  "My acquaintance with seagulls is limited." 
  "Well, we are going to play seagull." 
  "One will get you five," said Proudman Shaster, "that we all wind  up inside looking out." 
  General Ino chuckled. He spoke like an Irishman. 
  "Sure, an' thot reminds me of what brought all this to me mind," he  said. "They're buildin' a barbed−wire
  fence around Doc Savage's  headquarters, no less!" 
  "THE afternoon newspapers had pictures of the barbed−wire fence.  Fences, rather. They were four in
  number, one at each street corner,  and they completely blocked off, for anything less than a tank, ingress  or
  egress from the cloud−piercing giant of a building. 
  One headline said: 
  MYSTERY MAN MAKES  MYSTERY MOVE! 
  A second read: 
  POLICE PREPARE FOR  STARTLING EVENT! 
  Another: 
  MORE DOC SAVAGE  GRANDSTANDING! 
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  The stories were about the same. The police were telling nothing.  Passes were being issued to persons
  employed in the skyscraper which  was being fenced off. Newspapermen and cameramen were not getting
  passes. 
  There was a lot of talk about it over dinner cocktails that  evening. Some people went down to look at the
  barricade, and the cops  had traffic−jam trouble. 
  A little more of it developed the next morning. The newspapers all  had a paid advertisement, one full page. It
  was alike in every paper,  and in such plain type that some readers passed over it until they  heard about it;
  then they went back and read it. 
  Most of them got the feeling that something was coming, and that  they'd better hold onto their hats. 
  The ad read: 
  PRELIMINARY ANNOUNCEMENT 
  We wish to give the public some facts about  Doc Savage, although  the public may already know  them. 
  Doc Savage is Clark Savage, Jr., a man who has  been developed  scientifically, exactly as a great  scientific
  laboratory would develop  a product. This  scientific development has been carried on for  many  years, and the
  results are amazing. 
  We personally know Doc Savage to possess one  of the most amazing  scientific minds in existence.  He is a
  wizard. 
  To−morrow, Doc Savage will print an announcement.  It is an  announcement that will stir the world. 
  We believe it will change the entire course of  civilization.  (SIGNED) 
  Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair.  Brigadier General  Theodore Marley Brooks.  Major Thomas J.
  Roberts.  William Harper  Littlejohn.  Colonel John Renwick. 
  Almost every one knew the identity of the five men who had signed  the advertisement. 
  "They're Doc Savage's five aids," those who didn't know were  informed. 
  Of course, it was now generally realized that something was coming,  and that was why the barbed−wire
  barricade was being erected around Doc  Savage's skyscraper headquarters. 
  The police around the barricade had more traffic troubles. 
  Chapter 2. THE MIRACLE WAS REAL!
  GENERAL INO absorbed the morning papers and his  coffee−and−spot−of−brandy simultaneously. Then he
  descended to Proudman  Shaster's offices. 
  Proudman Shaster was just signing on the dotted line for a bustling  young man who looked General Ino over
  hopefully before he was shooed  out. 
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  "'What have you been doing?" General Ino wanted to know. 
  "Taking out more insurance," groaned Proudman Shaster. "Insurance  is a really wonderful thing. Really
  wonderful." 
  "There's a lot of really wonderful things in this," said General  Ino. "Uncle Sam makes a lot of them and calls
  them dollars. By the way,  what of the worthy gentlemen I call my colleagues?" 
  Proudman Shaster sighed and put away his new insurance policy. 
  "I have been in touch with them." 
  "All?" 
  "Yes. And they are assembling. They will be together in three  different hotels at four o'clock this afternoon,
  awaiting your visit." 
  General Ino had long ago stopped assembling his mob all in one  body, where, if things went wrong, every
  one would be nabbed at once by  the police. Good, skilled, unscrupulous followers were too difficult to  obtain
  to take such chances of losing them. 
  "Good," said General Ino. "I'll tell them we are going to tackle  this Doc Savage. I believe I have picked an
  excellent time. Have you  seen the late newspapers?" 
  "I have," Shaster admitted, nervously. 
  "Doc Savage is getting ready to break something big." 
  "He has never done a thing like this before," Shaster said,  gloomily. "Always, he has shunned publicity. Any
  one wanting his help  goes to him. But now, he seems to be coming out to the public for some  reason or
  other." 
  "It's big, I'll agree," chuckled General Ino. "And we need  something big to line our pocketbooks." 
  "It's so big we'll choke on it, I'll bet," groaned Shaster. 
  General Ino eyed him narrowly. "Shaky, eh? I believe I'll give my  men the choice of going up against this
  Doc Savage with me, or of not  going. That'll insure me of having men who are not afraid." 
  "It'll insure you of having no men at all," Proudman Shaster  predicted, gloomily. 
  General Ino considered. 
  "On second thought, I won't give them their choice," he decided. 
  Proudman Shaster wailed, "I wish I knew what this Doc Savage is up  to!" 
  A LOT of others had Proudman Shaster's idea. Nobody seemed to  really have a gnat's notion of what it was
  all about. 
  The newspapers − afternoon editions − didn't help any with their  second paid ad: 
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  A SECOND PRELIMINARY  ANNOUNCEMENT 
  We, having faith in Doc Savage's scientific  genius, and knowing  him as few − we really  believe none −
  others know him, wish to pave  the way for what is coming with some more  facts. 
  For years, Doc Savage has been experimenting  along a certain  scientific line. 
  Doc Savage, in fact, has been trying to accomplish  something that  magicians and fakirs and charlatans  have
  from time immemorial been  trying to make  people think they could do. 
  This thing can be done! Some day, some one will  do it. That day  has come. 
  Doc Savage can now do it! 
  But he can do it only once! Just once! And he  wants that once to  do the world as much good  as possible, so
  he is going to ask the aid  of  the United States public. 
  But we will let the details remain for Doc  Savage himself to  explain. 
  DOC SAVAGE WILL SPEAK  OVER THE RADIO AT  7 O'CLOCK TO−NIGHT! 
  It was signed by the same five men who had signed the previous  advertisement. 
  Quite a few radios which were out of order were hurriedly repaired  that afternoon. 
  Statistically minded persons who figured it up decided Doc Savage  had spent all of a quarter of a million
  dollars in advertising. Every  newspaper daily in the country had carried the announcements. The radio
  proclamation, study of any radio column revealed, was to be a really  nation−wide network. Every single
  radio station broadcasting in the  United States was on the hook−up. And those who knew radio knew it had
  taken plenty of money to swing that. 
  But every one knew that Doc Savage had, and had had for years, some  secret source of fabulous wealth. 
  A pin dropping would have sounded like a gunshot on the ether waves  of the nation at seven o'clock that
  night. 
  DOC SAVAGE came on the air without any trace of a preliminary  announcement. 
  Nobody was confused. Nobody thought for an instant that any one  except Doc Savage was speaking. And yet
  Doc Savage had never before  spoken over the radio on a national hook−up. 
  There was something about the voice. It was controlled, modulated,  deep, and it somehow conveyed the
  impression that it was a voice which  could do some amazing things, and that its owner was an individual who
  could do even more amazing things. 
  Anyway, Doc Savage's first thirteen words knocked the breath out of  his listeners. 
  "It is in my power to bring a dead man back to life," he said. 
  Then he waited for that to soak in. 
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  "Only one man can be brought back to life," he went on. "That is  because the process requires the use of a
  new element in a combination  which takes at least ten years to develop. You all know how the juice  of an
  apple must he allowed to ferment before it becomes vinegar. It is  the same with this element combination,
  except that the time process  covers years." 
  Another pause for it to be absorbed. 
  "It does not matter how long the dead man has been dead," the  remarkable voice of Doc Savage continued.
  "The body must be intact, or  the mummy of it intact." 
  Again, a pause. 
  "Now, so much for the statement of what can be done. Here is the  real reason for all of the display behind
  this. Here is why we have  gone to so much trouble to get the public attention of the country. 
  "We want help. We want suggestions. In short, we want to know who  the people of the United States want
  brought back to life." 
  The ether was remarkably quiet all over the nation. Strangely, it  happened that there was practically no static,
  so almost every listener  got a perfect reception from his set. 
  "Who will do the world the most good, if brought back to life?  These are the names of the committee of men
  and women who have been  appointed to make the final decision. They will want your instructions.  Mail,
  telephone, or telegraph them to the committee members." 
  There followed a list of names and addresses, given slowly, and  strangely enough, given in some uncanny
  fashion so that even the  listeners with poor memories had no trouble remembering at least one or  two of the
  names. 
  The newspapers commented on this the next day, but none of them hit  on the truth − Doc Savage had
  developed a teaching technique, the  ability to tell a thing so that it was not forgotten. It was simply in  the
  manner in which the words were delivered, the dramatic emphasis put  on them. 
  An announcer came on the air and said, "That was Doc Savage  speaking." 
  He nearly scared his listeners out of their skins. The announcer  had always been credited with a pleasant,
  excellent voice; but now,  after that remarkable voice which had just finished speaking, he  sounded like a
  crow dying. 
  OF course, there was excitement. Talk, at least. Every one had  probably at some time or other dreamed what
  a great thing it would be  to bring a dead person back to life; so the thing caught the popular  fancy. 
  The following day was a holiday Sunday, so every one had plenty of  time to talk about it. A number of
  hastily arranged sermons were  preached on the subject. They were, remarkably enough, favorable. Let  Doc
  Savage go ahead, if he could, was their consensus. There was not  much talk about mere man keeping his
  hands off the celestial  arrangement of things. 
  Telephone operators, telegraphers and mailmen had no time to think  or talk, though. The suggestions were
  already pouring in. The judges  had a phalanx of secretaries classifying the suggestions, and numbering  them. 
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  The following day, Monday, newspapers printed everything they could  find about Doc Savage. For the first
  time in his history, Doc Savage  permitted some facts about himself to get out. Mainly, they had to do  with his
  scientific training, and there was enough data to convince  even the most skeptical that Doc Savage was little
  short of an  inventive wizard. 
  He had perfected, it seemed, innumerable scientific and surgical  discoveries about which the public had no
  idea of the inventor. The  skeptics, and there were a number, dug up plenty of proof that all this  was the truth. 
  The suggestions from the public continued to pour in. There were  all kinds. As to the man to be brought back
  to life, they wanted the  sublime and the ridiculous. Names advanced ranged from Napoleon to  Lincoln to a
  grieving neighbor woman's dead little daughter. 
  Innumerable parents wanted departed children resurrected, and  living children wanted parents back. These
  latter pleas were sincere,  moving, and often came in on tear−stained stationery. On a number of  occasions the
  secretaries doing the classifying were found sobbing as  the result of some particularly heart−stirring appeal. 
  The general effect was to bring home the undeniable fact that death  is one of the profound things of life, and
  that the power of  resurrection, by science or by a miracle, was a thing of fabulous  possibilities in the bringing
  of joy to a bereaved one, to say nothing  of the feelings of the deceased who might or might not he snatched
  out  of a place where he or she didn't care to be. 
  One anonymous suggestor wanted Lucrezia Borgia brought back so she  could administer poison to the
  current crop of politicians. 
  ThE thing grew every day, and it was not, to use an old Dutch  expression, all beer and skittles for Doc
  Savage and his idea and plan.  There is probably no such thing as getting the press of the United  States all in
  accord about one thing, and this was no exception. 
  While one newspaper would sing Doc Savage's praises in print,  another would demand that he be drawn,
  quartered and hung out for  inspection so the public could see just what kind of a mechanism he was  that be
  should get the country so stirred up over something he  couldn't, obviously, accomplish. He was a fakir, that's
  what. A humbug,  an overrated publicity snatcher. 
  The name and the fame, as it were, of Doc Savage were growing, of  course. His picture was in all the
  newspapers, and commentators on the  radio discussed him, some reverently, some with the sharp scalpels of
  ridiculing disbelief. The comedians on the stage began to crack their  bum jokes, and those on the radio, worse
  ones. 
  Naturally, it all took a few days. The barbed−wire fences around  Doc Savage's skyscraper offices proved a
  wise precaution, because most  of New York City took turns at trying to pay the place a visit.  Newspapermen,
  writers, photogra phers and cranks and quacks and wise  guys of every descrip tion were turned away. Doc
  Savage was in  seclusion on the eighty−sixth floor of the skyscraper. 
  Communication with the public was handled by two of Doc Savage's  aids commonly called "Monk" and
  "Ham." 
  Monk was practically as broad as he was tall: he had no forehead to  speak of, enough mouth for several men,
  and with only a little more  stubby, red hair his skin would have made a fair ape−skin rug. His full  name was
  Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, and he had a pet  pig named Habeas Corpus which was as
  funny a hog as Monk was a human.  Monk was also one of the world's leading chemists. 
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  10
  
  Ham was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, and Harvard  acclaimed him as its greatest law−school
  graduate, and the rest of the  world admitted that might be right. 
  That part of the world interested in snappy clothes admitted also  that Ham was the best dressed man in New
  York, if not in the United  States. 
  Ham not only admitted the distinction. He claimed it, and was  practically willing to use his innocent−looking
  black cane, in reality  a sword cane with the tip chemically treated so that a prick produced  quick
  unconsciousness, on any one willing to argue the point. 
  Ham also had a pet. Chemistry. Chemistry had been named after  Monk's profession. That was to aggravate
  Monk. Chemistry by himself  also aggravated Monk, because Chemistry was a runt edition of some kind  of an
  ape, and he was what they call in the Missouri hills, "just about  a spittin' image" of Monk. 
  These four − Monk, Ham, Habeas Corpus. Chemistry − got along, as  far as the outside world could see, in an
  alarming way. It seemed only  a question of time until they ate each other up. 
  A NEWSPAPER REPORTER asked questions through the barbed−wire fence. 
  "Tell me one thing, you two. Doc Savage has always dodged  publicity. Now he's handing it out by the barrel.
  Why?" 
  Monk said, "It's this way. Doc can bring a guy to life, and − " 
  "A guy?" said the newsman dryly. "The women of the country wili  like that! Why not bring a woman to
  life?" 
  "Doc ain't never gone for the fems," Monk grinned. "That end is my  specialty." 
  Ham put in crisply, "Whoever the committee selects will be brought  back to life. It will be necessary for the
  country to have faith in Doc  Savage and his scientific wizardry, or some people will think the thing  is a fake. 
  "The person brought back to life is to be one who will do, it is  hoped, infinite good for mankind. That person
  will have to have the  confidence of the public. The public will have to believe the  individual is the real,
  geniline, original article who has been brought  back to life; otherwise it will be impossible to accomplish
  what we  hope for. 
  "In other words, we are bringing a great person back to this  trouble−ridden world to aid humanity, and
  humanity must believe in him  to be aided." 
  Monk put in, "About half the suggestions coming to the judges are  to bring Jesus of Nazareth back to life.
  That illustrates the point. If  we tried to make the public think we were going to produce Christ,  they'd know
  we were fakes, because even Doc Savage's assistance would  hardly be necessary there. 
  "This thing is dead on the level, and one man, and only one, can be  brought back to life. It might be a woman.
  The judges will tell. We're  trying to make the American public understand that Doc Savage can do  this thing,
  incredible as we'll admit it sounds." 
  "Doc Savage has spent a period of years perfecting the method," Ham  said. 
  "The judges," Monk repeated, "will select the subject to be  resurrected by modern science." 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 2. THE MIRACLE WAS REAL!
  11
  
  Chapter 3. SCHEMES
  SENATOR GUSTALL MOAB FUNSTON was one of the judges. 
  The judges met in Washington, in the senate office building using  the suite of Senator Funston. It was a night
  session, It was supposed  to be secret, but the corridors outside crawled with newspapermen. The  janitors next
  morning were to cart out barrels of uised photographic  flashlight bulbs. 
  The door opened about two o'clock in the morning, and the judges  filed out. 
  "Sorry, gentlemen," Senator Funston told the besieging newshawks.  "The announcement of the individual to
  be brought back to life will be  made one week from to−day." 
  "But why not now?" 
  "That date was the one decided upon to make the announcement." 
  "But why?" 
  Senator Funston didn't reply to that because he couldn't think of a  really good answer. They had just done it
  that way for no good reason  except that announcements generally had a date. 
  "Is the one to be brought back to life an inventor?" 
  "I'm sorry. I will not answer that." 
  "There's a report you selected Thomas A. Edison." 
  Senator Funston kept his silence. 
  "Is it a woman?" 
  "I'm sorry, gentlemen." 
  "Is it George Washington?" 
  Silence. 
  "Abraham Lincoln?" 
  More silence. 
  "Rudolph Valentino?" 
  Even more silence. 
  "How about the Sphinx?" a newspaper writer asked, dryly. 
  Senator Funston gave them the big, hearty laugh he had perfected  for use on his constituents, permitted
  himself to be photographed both  with and without his five−gallon hat − he was a senator from Wyoming −
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 3. SCHEMES
  12
  
  and then excused himself and went home. 
  Instead of staying at a hotel, Senator Funston occupied, all alone,  an apartment on southwest Delaware
  Avenue. A Negro woman came in, did  the cooking and went home in the evenings, usually about nine.
  Named  "Orchid" Jones, she had been recently hired. 
  Senator Funston came in, took his key out of the lock, put it into  his pocket, then looked in surprise at the
  dark mound of shadow in the  chair by the window. 
  "Why, Orchid!" he said. "Why haven't you gone home yet?" 
  "It ain't Orchid," said the shadowy form. "But it's liable to be  lilies if you don't cobperate." 
  THE voice sounded like a bulldog with a bone when another bulldog  comes close, so Senator Funston put his
  hands up beside his big hat and  stood where he was. 
  "For the moment, my nocturnal fellow, you are lucky," he said,  heavily. "I carry, as a habit, a goodly bit of
  money with me always.  You are not welcome to it, but it is in a chamois money belt around my  waist." 
  "How much?" asked the shadowy other. 
  "Twelve hundred dollars." 
  "Poultry provender," said the other. "Keep it." 
  Senator Funston tried to wet his lips, but his tongue was as dry as  a rope, for this was not so good. Moreover,
  he had caught sight of the  weapon his murky visitor was holding, and he didn't like the looks of  it. To all
  appearances, it was some kind of a water pistol. 
  "The liquid in this thing" − the visitor moved the water pistol  slightly − "will kill you instantly. It throws a
  liquid gas sometimes  used in warfare~ The muzzle aperture is closed by a tiny bit of wax,  but when I press
  the discharge slide, or trigger − " 
  He left it unfinished. 
  "What do you want?" 
  "The answer to a question," said the other. 
  Senator Funston, an observing solon, had perceived by now that the  unwelcome person wore a dark−blue suit
  little different from thousands  of others being worn in Washington that night. The face was completely
  encased in a remarkably black and enveloping mask, while black gloves  were on the hands. 
  "Ahem," coughed Senator Funston. "Let's have it." 
  "The name of the man or woman Doc Savage is going to bring back to  life." 
  "Nothing doing!" 
  "I'm not fooling!" 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 3. SCHEMES
  13
  
  "Neither am I!" 
  "Then we're wasting our time talking!" 
  The masked man stood up, calmly extended his water pistol, and it  was instantly evident he was going to
  shoot − or squirt. 
  "Wait!" croaked Senator Funston. "I'm a fool to resist you!" 
  "Of course." 
  "There's a slip in my pocket, a slip of paper bearing a name." 
  The masked man came over and got it. He was not as tall nor as  burly as Senator Funston, and at close range
  he smelled a little like a  flower shop. He looked at the paper. 
  "I'll be damned!" he said. "Turn around and let me tie your hands  behind you." 
  Senator Funston turned around. The other man hit him on the head  with a blackjack, stepped over his
  senseless body, and walked out into  the kitchen. The Negro woman, Orchid, was there, bound and gagged.
  The  masked man walked on out. 
  He met lawyer Proudman Shaster on a near−by street, and got into  the limousine with him. He had by now
  removed his mask, revealing his  face. 
  It was General Ino. 
  "Do any good?" Proudman Shaster asked him. 
  "We're all set," said Ino. 
  "You're not overlooking any bets?" the shyster lawyer asked  uneasily. 
  "Not a bet." 
  "What was the name?" 
  General Ino produced the slip he had taken from Senator Funston and  let Proudman Shaster read the name on
  it. 
  "Thomas  Jefferson,  the  great  democrat!"  exclaimed Proudman  Shaster. 
  SENATOR FUNSTON revived with a series of lusty groans, rolled over  several times, got up, stumbled to
  his suitcase, and got a big  single−action six−shooter, after which he went looking for his visitor. 
  A policeman found him wandering up and down Delaware Avenue with  the gun and almost threw him into
  jail, after which Senator Funston  stamped back to his apartment, into the kitchen for a drink, and found  the
  poor Negro maid, Orchid. 
  When she was untied, Orchid said things that convinced Senator  Funston that the lady of complexion had
  either been a truck driver or  married to some one who was. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 3. SCHEMES
  14
  
  The masked man, it seemed, had simply walked in early in the  evening, tied Orchid up, then waited. 
  Senator Funston went to a telephone and called Doc Savage,  long−distance, in New York City. When the
  remarkable voice of the  bronze man answered, the senator explained what had happened. 
  "But I was too slick for them," he said. Then he turned his head  and directed, "Quit that cussing, Orchid!" 
  Orchid was draped on a couch near the telephone, saying blistering  things in a low tone. The Negro maid
  became quiet under the wintry eye  of the senator. 
  Senator Funston told Doc Savage, "There was a slip of paper in my  pocket bearing the name of the individual
  whom I, as a good and loyal  party democrat, consider the greatest man, mortal man, who ever lived.  That, of
  course, was Thomas Jefferson, founder of the democratic  party." 
  "I gather," said Doc Savage, "that he was not the one chosen?" 
  "Correct. The chosen name will not be announced until the date  named. The resurrected man will not be
  Thomas Jefferson. I was  outvoted." 
  "Thank you for this information," Doc Savage said, quietly. 
  "That's all right," said Senator Funston. "I guess you know more  about what it might mean and what to do
  about it than I do." 
  That ended the conversation. 
  WHEN Senator Funston had hung up, Orchid Jones got up off the  couch, pulled a revolver out of a
  voluminous dress bosom, and started  to point it at the solon. Only started. For Senator Funston was still  mad,
  and the instant he saw the gun, he gave a wrathful leap, and the  next instant, there was a fight. 
  Funston started a haymaker. It missed. A fist hit him in the eye.  Another mashed his nose. Another, or the
  same one, loosened teeth. The  senator snorted blood, teeth and cow−country profanity. He got hold of
  Orchid. Cloth tore, garments gave, came away; they proved to be  padding. 
  "Hell!" roared Funston. "You ain't a female!" 
  Chairs upset. Fists smacked. The men groaned, hissed, cursed.  Clawing, Funston got more of Orchid's
  clothing. 
  "A white man!" Funston gritted. "Damn my soul! I've been took in!" 
  He was going to be taken again. too. The white foe was too much for  him. Younger, more skill, more
  strength. The old senator, who had  dieted too long on cigars, beer and speeches, went down. 
  Orchid's gun got in his eye. 
  "Whom has the committee selected for the resurrection?" Orchid  asked, ugly−voiced. 
  Senator Funston was student enough of human nature to know when he  saw threatened death, and he saw it
  now. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 3. SCHEMES
  15
  
  He gave a name − a one−word name. 
  Orchid seemed surprised. 
  "Who suggested that name?" Orchid demanded. 
  "Well, it was submitted by Doc Savage's aid, the eminent  archaeologist and geologist, William Harper
  Littlejohn." 
  "Yeah," said Orchid, thoughtfully. "I don't know. For a minute, I  thought Doc Savage might have a smell of
  our plan." 
  "I wish," said Senator Funston, "that I had never heard of this  thing." 
  "You would have been better off," Orchid agreed. 
  Orchid then used all six bullets from his revolver to splash the  brains of Senator Funston thoroughly over the
  rug. 
  Chapter 4. CARSON ALEXANDER OLMAN
  ORCHID JONES now did something that cost a great many persons their  lives in the course of time. The
  thing was done in an effort to save  his own neck. 
  He simply attempted to cover up all clues by going over the place  thoroughly for finger prints, using a towel
  and a bottle of rubbing  alcohol out of the senatorial bathroom. 
  The finger prints were not many, for Orchid had worn rubber gloves  while washing dishes and cooking, and
  cotton ones while dusting and  making the bed − a circumstance to which Senator Funston had failed to  attach
  enough importance. 
  Orchid listened from time to time, but no sounds indicated any one  coming. He was not worrying too much
  about being discovered. He had a  henchman outside to keep a lookout. 
  The murderer, satisfied that any clues were removed to the last  degree, left the apartment, joined his
  confederate in the street, and  they drove away. 
  It was then that Orchid Jones observed his hands, but he did not  realize he was looking at what was the
  equivalent of a death warrant  for many people. He merely noted that the alcohol he had used to remove  the
  finger prints had dissolved some of the unusually good black stain  with which he had given himself a Negro's
  complexion. 
  TWENTY minutes later, Orchid Jones walked into a hotel room where  General Ino sat giving Proudman
  Shaster a gem of Oriental philosophy  which he had composed himself on the spur of the moment. 
  "The success of a careful planner looks like the success of a damn  fool to an outsider who doesn't know − "
  Ino stopped and eyed Orchid  Jones. "Well, dark flower, what is wrong?" 
  "I had to kill the damn senator," said Orchid. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 4. CARSON ALEXANDER OLMAN
  16
  
  "Knowing you, I'll bet you did − not," said General Ino. "But what  were the circumstances?" 
  "The windbag tricked us." 
  "You don't say! Who ever heard of a senator being tricky!" 
  "They ain't bringing Thomas Jefferson back to life," growled Orchid  Jones. 
  "No?" General Ino made the one word sound like an inquiry. And he  had become suddenly serious. 
  "I thought it'd be Thomas A. Fdison," said Orchid. "Edison was my  guess, see. But I was wrong." 
  "Not an impossible circumstance," General Ino reminded, dryly. "But  you can spare us the drama." 
  Ino frowned and waited. 
  Orchid whispered the name which had been yielded by poor Senator  Funston. 
  The name gave General Ino a shock. He was silent for moments. 
  "I've heard," Proudman Shaster put in uneasily, "that Savage does  not miss many bets." 
  HAM, the other lawyer who was one of Doc Savage's aids, held about  the same ideas − of Doc Savage's habit
  of passing up no bets. 
  A big plane slammed over Washington with a volleying sound, coming  from the direction of New York, and
  Ham sat in a comfortable seat in  the plane and carefully daubed the tip of his sword cane with a fresh  supply
  of the sticky chemical which produced harmless unconsciousness a  very few moments after it got into an
  open wound. 
  "Listen, pitiful and stupid," Ham said. "We're here in Washington  in such a hurry because that attempt to get
  the name from Senator  Funston means somebody is up to something, and Doc wants to look into  it." 
  "You're so bright you can't see nothin' but your own glitter!" Monk  complained in his small, childlike voice.
  "Don'tcha think I know why  we're here?" 
  Major Thomas J. Roberts, better known as "Long Tom," sat opposite  Monk. He was a thin, pale man who
  would have been eyed speculatively by  any undertaker. Despite his unhealthy appearance, no one could recall
  his ever having been ill. He was an electrical wizard, and one of Doc  Savage's aids. The name Long Tom had
  been earned long ago, after he had  staged a hectic experience with one of those old−fashioned cannons
  known as a "long tom." 
  "You two have become pickled in your own bile," Long Tom told Monk  and Ham. 
  Doc Savage was flying the plane. He slanted it down upon the  airport just across the Potomac. Two airport
  attendants sauntered out,  one finishing off a sandwich, the other picking his teeth. They looked  at who was
  getting out of the plane and the one nearly choked on what  was left of the sandwich. 
  "Doc Savage!" 
  "Yeah," agreed the other. "I'd recognize him anywhere!" 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 4. CARSON ALEXANDER OLMAN
  17
  
  The taxi driver recognized him. So did two policemen, one of whom  was standing on the traffic circle below
  the Capitol building which you  pass before you turn to get on Delaware Avenue. 
  They went into Senator Funston's apartment house, and got no answer  to their ring. The door lock delayed
  Doc Savage about half a minute,  which was long for him, and they went in and looked at the Senator's
  corpse. 
  They had hardly glanced at the body the first time when a strange  and fantastic sound came into existence − a
  trilling with a quality  that defied description. So low that at times its existence seemed more  imagination than
  actuality. It rose and fell, definitely musical  without having a tune. It was exotic. It might have been the result
  of  a small wind in a naked, sleet−laden forest. 
  This fantastic sound was made, without conscious effort, by the  giant bronze man who was the fourth of the
  plane's party. 
  THE physical development of this bronze man was striking. Not alone  because he was a giant with Herculean
  muscles, but because his  development was so symmetrical that his true size was apparent only  when he stood
  close to others to whom his proportions might be  compared. 
  His skin had a fine texture and a bronze hue that must have come  from countless tropical suns. His features
  were regular, but not what  could be called finely chiseled, and the result was a striking  handsomeness. 
  But the bronze giant's eyes were the most unusual thing about him.  Like pools of flake gold stirred away by
  tiny, invisible winds, the  eyes had something almost weird about them. They seemed to have a power  to
  compel, to do super−natural things. 
  There were many unusual qualities in this bronze giant who was Doc  Savage. 
  Monk, the chemist, said. "Well, here's my chance to try out my new  finger print stuff." 
  He was carrying it with him − a small case containing what looked  like a flat perfume atomizer. He pressed
  the bulb of this, and threw an  almost invisible spray over the telephone, the backs of wooden chairs,  the table
  and anywhere else that hands might have touched. Wherever the  vapor settled, finger prints came out
  instantly. 
  The prints were as plain as if they had been painstakingly printed  there. 
  Monk looked at Doc Savage. "By George, you were right about me  mixing this junk up wrong, Doc! The
  suggestion you gave me made an  improvement!" 
  They began to go over the prints, Doc Savage employing a small  pocket magnifier. 
  "Senator Funston apparently had no visitors at all at his  apartment," the bronze man said quietly at last.
  "There are no prints  around except the senator's." 
  Eventually, the bronze giant picked up the towel and the bottle of  rubbing alcohol with which Orchid Jones
  had wiped off his finger  prints. 
  "There was some one here when the senator telephoned me," Doc said.  "He spoke to the person, his exact
  words being, 'Quit that cussing,  Orchid!' Ham, you see the apartment superintendent, and ask about  Orchid." 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 4. CARSON ALEXANDER OLMAN
  18
  
  The dapper lawyer did not take long to report back. "Orchid was  Orchid Jones, the cook," Ham stated. 
  Doc Savage's flake gold eyes seemed occupied by the towel he was  holding. "Negro?" 
  "Black as Monk's conscience," Ham admitted. 
  Doc glanced at Monk, and the homely chemist at once declared,  "Ham's a liar, as usual! My conscience is as
  pure and white as − as − " 
  Doc said, "Have you got your pocket laboratory with you?" 
  "I've got some key chemicals," Monk said. "I always carry 'em.  Stuff you can make a lot of basic tests and
  combinations, and − " 
  "Let me have them a moment." 
  Monk passed them over. 
  Doc made several simple chemical tests on dark areas of the towel.  These were hardly smears, more like
  sections where the linen had  darkened. 
  "All right," he said. "We will leave now." 
  "But the killer!" Ham demanded. "There's no clue, and we can hardly  pass this killing up!" 
  "On the contrary," Doc corrected. "There is a very definite clue.  It should lead us directly to Orchid Jones." 
  ORCHID JONES was not afraid. He leaned back, lolling a cigar around  with his tongue. He dearly loved
  cigars, and playing the part of Orchid  Jones had not permitted him to smoke them. He angrily threw down a
  washrag with which he had endeavored to make some imprint on the dye on  his face and hands. The rag
  smelled of alcohol. 
  "No dice!" he complained. "I thought alcohol would take the stuff  off, but it only gets a little of it at first; then
  it don't do any  more good." 
  General Ino looked vaguely interested. "What made you think alcohol  would help?" 
  "Some of it came off on the towel when I was wiping off my finger  prints in the senator's apartment," Orchid
  explained. 
  "I see. Where's the towel?" 
  "Left it. It wasn't stained enough that anybody'll notice." 
  "I see." 
  General Ino got up and went into another room. When he came back,  he was holding a small packet in his
  hands, and a slip of paper. 
  "Listen," he said. "I told you the only thing that will take that  stain off is a certain combination of three rather
  unusual chemicals.  You can purchase them at a chemical supply house. There is surely one  in Washington." 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 4. CARSON ALEXANDER OLMAN
  19
  
  He handed over the slip of paper. 
  "The names of the chemicals are written on that," he said. 
  Orchid Jones looked at them, frowned while his lips made futile  twistings trying to pronounce the chemical
  terms; then he said, "You  mix one part of each, and add enough water to make a paste, eh?" 
  "Right." General Ino leaned forward. "Now, here's something else I  want to talk about." 
  Orchid put away the paper with the chemical names. "Let fly." 
  General Ino unwrapped his package. "You see this?" 
  He held up a tiny jar of something that might have been a salve.  The jar had no label. 
  "What is it?" Orchid asked. 
  "You take it and put some under your finger nails," said General  Ino, not answering the question directly.
  "When they catch you, if they  do, you do something that looks perfectly natural. You gnaw your finger
  nails." 
  Orchid wet his lips and looked as if he didn't like the idea much.  "I gnaw my finger nails, eh?" 
  "The stuff under them will make you unconscious for about a week,"  explained General Ino. "They can't
  question you, and by that time,  we'll have things straightened out." 
  "I see," Orchid said uneasily. 
  General Ino stood erect. 
  "Ever'thing bane sat," he observed, sounding something like a  Scandinavian. "Aye tank Aye ban' go home." 
  He did. 
  ORCHID JONES slept well the rest of the night. He had been one of  General Ino's men for years, and he
  knew the general was about as  smooth an article as lived; or, at least, as followed criminal ways. 
  Came nine o'clock and Orchid Jones turned up at the town's leading  drug house, to ask for the chemicals on
  his list. There was a delay of  perhaps ten minutes while the order was filled because, it was  explained, these
  chemicals were a bit rare and would have to be gotten  out of stock. 
  Orchid Jones was dressed as a Negro. 
  He got his chemicals, paid for them, walked out of the door, and  two men came alongside of him and grasped
  him by the elbows. 
  Orchid looked at the men and nearly had heart failure. One of the  men was squat and hairy, the other slender
  and very dapperly clad.  Orchid knew they were Doc Savage's two aids, Monk and Ham. 
  He tried to get out his gun. They hit him on the head, and while he  was stunned, took his gun away from him.
  They got Orchid into a  curtained car. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 4. CARSON ALEXANDER OLMAN
  20
  
  "Pretty soft," Monk said. "Orchid Jones has changed his sex, but  that didn't make no difference." 
  Orchid swallowed several times and managed to get his heart back  somewhere near where it belonged. He
  had not been so scared since he  was a small kid and had been caught stealing a revolver. 
  "H−how'd you find me?" he gulped. 
  "Doc analyzed the stuff on the towel and learned the dye on your  skin was a type which had to be removed by
  a certain mixture of  chemicals," Monk informed him. "All we did was check on all the drug  concerns around
  here to see who had bought that combination of  chemicals. Nobody had. So we waited for somebody to buy
  'em. All the  drug concerns were to notify us. When they telephoned about you, we  zipped right over." 
  ORCHID JONES was silent and looked at his hands. The stuff under  his finger nails looked as innocent as
  traces of grime. 
  "What you gonna do with me?" he asked. 
  "Nothing," Monk said, "but ask you some questions. I mean, maybe we  won't do nothing to you, if you
  answer the questions." 
  Orchid Jones glanced furtively at his captors and read that they  meant what they said and that he was in a
  very bad jam. He looked at  his finger nails again. 
  He began gnawing his finger nails. 
  He took only a couple of gnaws and he began to shake, a  vile−looking foam came to his lipS. He shook more
  violently. His eyes  popped. He made some gargling noises. 
  A horrible look got into his eyes and showed that Orchid Jones  understood what was happening to him. 
  "Arg−aw−r−gr!" he said, and it was no more understandable than  that. 
  "What the heck?" exploded Monk. 
  Orchid Jones continued to make noises that he hoped were words, but  among the words, only a name was
  understandable. 
  "Carson Alexander Olman," was the name. Orchid Jones stopped  shaking and frothing after a time. Monk
  examined him. 
  When the homely chemist looked up from his examination, he wore an  expression both startled and
  disgusted. 
  "Orchid Jones," said Monk, "is as dead as he can be." 
  Chapter 5. MASTER PLOTTER
  IT took Doc Savage less than two minutes to find the cause of  Orchid Jones's death − the poison under the
  finger nails. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 5. MASTER PLOTTER
  21
  
  "There is no hope of reviving him," the bronze man said. 
  Monk muttered, "I don't believe the fellow knew he was takin'  poison. 
  "I'm sure of it," dapper Ham snapped. "He did a lot of muttering, a  dying statement, as he passed out." 
  "Any words understandable?" 
  Ham said three of them had been, and gave the name. 
  "Carson Alexander Olman," Doc Savage repeated, quietly. "Well, our  best bet − " 
  "I'll be superamalgamated!" put in a new voice. 
  The speaker was very tall and so thin that it made a person ache to  look at him. He had a high forehead, the
  aesthetic face of a thinker,  and it was a bet whether or not, when he started to walk, his clothing  would fall
  off. From his lapel dangled a ribbon, and to the end of this  was attached a monocle with a thick lens. 
  "I'll be superamalgamated," said this person. "My acquaintanceship  congenerates a consimilarity of
  nomenclature." 
  The user of the words was William Harper Littlejohn, oftener known  as "Johnny," a world−famed
  archa'ologist and geologist, and a man who  never used a small word where he could think of a big one.
  Johnny was  another of Doc's aids. 
  Monk looked dizzy and said, "Will somebody please translate that  for me?" 
  "Johnny means," Doc suggested, "that the only Carson Alexander  Olman he knows is a rather well−known
  archaeologist by that name." 
  "A supereminent − " 
  "Whoa!" Monk said. "Them words is too much for me before breakfast.  Try little ones, please!" 
  "Carson Alexander Olman is well known in his field," said Johnny,  reluctantly. 
  Pale, feeble−looking Long Tom, the electrical wizard, who had been  in the background, saying little, now
  spoke up 
  "What I'd like to know is why all this trouble!" he growled. "Can't  we try to bring a person back to life,
  somebody who will really do this  lopsided world some good, without a lot of trouble coming to camp on  our
  ears.?" 
  Monk snorted, "You'd waste away if you didn't have any excitementi" 
  Ham eyed Long Tom's pale thinness speculatively. "I'd like to know  how he could waste away any more." 
  Long Tom sniffed. "Are we going to look up this Carson Alexander  Olman?" 
  "We are," Doc Savage said. "We will telephone him, long−distance,  now. Then, if we cannot get any
  satisfaction, we will have Renny, the  member of our organization who is still in New York, look into the
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 5. MASTER PLOTTER
  22
  
  matter." 
  Doc Savage went to the telephone and asked the long−distance  operator for the home of archaeologist Carson
  Alexander Olman in New  York City. 
  IN the home of Carson Alexander Olman, the telephone rang in  regularly spaced jangles for a long time, and
  was not answered,  although there was one man in the house who could have answered it. 
  This man was bending over Olman's filing cabinet, where all the  archaeologist's personal correspondence was
  kept. The room was gloomy,  and the man wore a raincoat, collar turned up, and a hat with the brim  yanked
  down all around. Big, horn−rimmed spectacles otherwise made the  real lines of the man's face hard to
  distinguish. 
  Carson Alexander Olman had inherited great wealth from an old  pirate of an industrialist father; but he had
  always been a man of very  systematic methods. It was this trait which had made him a leader in  his field,
  with one of the greatest private museums in existence. He  carried system into his personal life. For instance,
  every scrap of his  correspondence for years past was carefully filed in the cabinets  beside his desk. 
  The furtive man was going through that correspondence. 
  He was concentrating on the file marked, "FOREIGN." Time after  time, he removed a paper and stowed it
  into an inside coat pocket. 
  Outside, it rained steadily. Water stood on the walks, streamed off  roofs and ran furiously in gutters. 
  Inside, the telephone rang on. 
  Carson Alexander Olman did not answer it because his body lay on  the floor beside the desk; his head was
  over cooking against a hot  radiator. The head had left quite a crimson trail rolling across the  carpet, and the
  sword which had parted it from the body lay beside the  body. It was a big, two−handed sword of the sixteenth
  century, English. 
  The searcher seemed to be about done. He went back over the file  once more, rapidly, checking to see that
  there had been no mistake.  Then he went to the door, pulled his collar higher, and went out. 
  His trouser legs, from the knees down, got wet in the rain before  he reached the sedan parked near by, and got
  into the rear, where  General Ino sat. 
  The car moved away, making sounds somewhat like a dog swimming  hard. 
  "Well, mine fran'?" queried General Ino, imitating an East Side New  Yorker. 
  The prowler turned his coat collar down from his face − the very  pale face of Lawyer Proudman Shaster. 
  "I got everything." He shuddered. "It was horrible! His head −  against the radiator − and I couldn't bear to
  move it − the smell − " 
  He shook as if he were out in the cold rain. 
  "Vy don't you try for to be calm," suggested General Ino. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 5. MASTER PLOTTER
  23
  
  Proudman Shaster shook harder, gulped, "I'm a hell of a crook to  get so scared, but I can't help it!" 
  "It's the crooks who don't get scared who get caught," Ino assured  him. "Let's see what you've got." 
  Proudman Shaster passed the papers over, and General Ino, when he  had read them, seemed satisfied. "This
  was all?" 
  "All. I'm sure of that. Not a trace of this matter remains in  Carson Alexander Olman's correspondence files." 
  "No one, by searching the effects of the dead man, will be able to  learn that a gentleman named Sir Rodney
  Dillsworth is selling a certain  article to Olman?" the general mused. 
  "Exactly." 
  "Verrry, verrry goot," murmured General Ino. "In vun hour, no less,  you find yourself mit some other
  gentlemens on a lot of vater." 
  "A LOT of vater" proved to be the Atlantic Ocean, and the "other  gentlemen" proved to be a group of six lads
  who were as choice a lot of  throat cutters as General Ino had in his organization. 
  Proudman Shaster, somewhat the gentleman, although he had lopped  off one head with a sword that night,
  had been a bit uneasy about the  social status of the six who were to aid him, and whom he had never  before
  seen. 
  He realized immediately when they introduced themselves − this did  not take place until the liner was two
  days out − that the six were,  figuratively speaking, wolves in sheep's clothing. Gentlemen, yes  indeed −
  outwardly. 
  The liner docked in Southampton on Tuesday. 
  On Wednesday, the dignified British Isle had a murder. Sir Rodney  Dillsworth's butler was walking past his
  master's study when he noted  the cat licking at something red that was crawling out from under the  door. 
  Sir Rodney was in his study with his head cut off. 
  An old−time battle−ax had done the work. Sir Rodney had been rather  a bit of an archaeologist, and most of
  his manse was a museum  containing innumerable relics, including the battle−ax. Scotland Yard  was called in,
  and there was a hubbub. 
  Proudman Shaster sat at ease in a London hotel and advised his  associates, "It's not the first job we've pulled
  in England in our  time, so don't get worried. General Ino planned all this out, and we're  operating exactly
  according to plan. Nothing will go wrong." 
  The other men sat around and looked. bilious and uneasy, and it was  not alone because the heavy local food
  had given them indigestion. 
  Proudman Shaster fingered a pile of papers. They were receipts,  invoices − such papers as a man might have
  after he had bought  something in a foreign country and had it shipped to his home, then  sold it to a man
  named Carson Alexander Olman in the United States,  city of New York. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 5. MASTER PLOTTER
  24
  
  "Sir Rodney had already shipped the darn thing to Olman," grumbled  Proudman Shaster. "We'll have to take
  the same steamer and grab it. One  consolation: There's nothing whatever to show that Sir Rodney ever  owned
  this thing, or who he sold it to." 
  "Them two killings might not have been necessary to cover our  tracks," one of the mob suggested. 
  "General Ino never takes a chance," advised Shaster. "Our next move  is to get hold of this thing before it is
  delivered in New York." 
  "You're sure it's the right one?" 
  "Yes, positive." Proudman Shaster tapped the papers. "The name is  given here. Pey−deh−eh−ghan." 
  "Pey−deh−eh−ghan?" 
  "That's the name." 
  The man shuddered. "What'll it he in?" 
  "An iron−bound box," Proudman Shaster said. 
  THE iron−bound box was about four feet high, the same width, and  twice as long. It left England on the
  freighter Boisterour, and  somewhere between there and New York City, it apparantly vanished. 
  But no one noticed the vanishing. The name disappeared from the  freight lists as completely as the box did
  from the hold. There was  nothing on paper to show it had ever been aboard. 
  Anyway, everybody aboard was excited over something else. The third  mate − he was in charge of the cargo
  holds − was found dead. He was a  tough guy, had a lot of enemies, so his demise surprised nobody; but  the
  manner of it did. The third mate was found with his head cut off,  and a fire−ax sticking in the stump. 
  Proudman Shaster told General Ino, "It's horrible! I think I'm  going to have a nervous breakdown!" 
  "Quien sabe?" murmured the general, speaking Spanish, "They cannot  talk with their heads off. The mate
  discovered you moving  Pey−deh−eh−ghan, eh?" 
  Proudman Shaster wrung his hands. "I wish I could control myself!  When I get in a tight place, it seems all I
  can think of is cutting  their heads off!" 
  They were in a small warehouse in a discreet part of Jersey.  General Ino walked back and looked at the big,
  iron−strapped box which  his truck had just unloaded. Rather, the truck was hired, and the  driver was one of
  his men. 
  "How did you get it off the freighter?" he asked. 
  "I lowered it into the launch alongside after night." Proudman  Shaster explained. "We talked to the look−out,
  and one man was on the  bridge to hold his attention while the box was hoisted overside." 
  "You didn't drop it in the water?" the general demanded, anxiously. 
  "Oh, no! We were very careful!" 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 5. MASTER PLOTTER
  25
  
  "And we will continue being careful." General Ino eyed the big box  which contained Pey−deh−eh−ghan, and
  sighed rapturously. "We are all  set to cash in on one of the biggest things in history − Doc Savage's
  resurrection stunt." 
  Chapter 6. WISDOM
  REGARDLESS of whether or not it was one of the biggest things in  history, the United States was going for
  it in a big way. Skeptics had  about disappeared as the day of the final announcement drew close, and  this was
  probably due in large to the astute publicity campaign which  Doc Savage and his aids had conducted. 
  As the bronze man had explained, in order for the person they were  going to bring back to life to do real good
  in the world, the world  would have to believe him genuine, and that meant believing that Doc  Savage could
  actually bring one man back to life. If the selection was  George Washington, every one would naturally have
  to believe it was  George. People would not be likely to take orders from a fellow they  considered a fake
  George. More than likely, they would have him thrown  in jail. 
  The day before the announcement, the newspapers carried in paid  advertising: 
          DOC SAVAGE TO ANNOUNCE
          OVER RADIO AT 7 O'CLOCK!
  At seven o'clock, they stopped the street cars so people could get  off and listen to the radios in the corner
  drug stores. 
  Every one knew Doc Savage's remarkable, trained voice by now. 
  Doc Savage said: 
  "Many are going to be disappointed and more surprised by the name  selected by the committee. Here are
  some of the reasons why certain  names were passed over. 
  "Napoleon Bonaparte, suggested by many, was not selected because he  was primarily a warrior, and this poor
  world has enough of those now.  William Shakespeare was passed over because it will take more than a  writer
  and dramatist to do this world lasting good. George Washington,  Abraham Lincoln and Thomas A. Edison
  were prominently discussed. Of  these three, the field was narrowed down to Edison, the great inventor,
  whose value to mankind perhaps will not be fully recognized for another  hundred years." 
  There was a rather long pause, and any number of persons reached  over hastily and tested to see if they could
  still bear a station hiss,  thinking their radios had gone haywire. 
  "Edison is a man of inventions. He stands for material progress,  for the introduction of new machinery." 
  Another pause. 
  "But it is doubtful if more scientific progress will help the  world," Doc Savage continued. "What we want is a
  great thinker. Not a  man of profound mathematical propoundings such as Einstein, but a man  who can keep
  his head and think out the right and wrong way of doing  things." 
  The pauses came just often enough to permit what was being said to  soak into the minds of the listening
  public. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 6. WISDOM
  26
  
  "The judges went back into history for their man," Doc Savage said.  "The name which they finally decided
  upon is that of an ancient whose  mortal remains were recently found and positively identified. There is
  absolutely no doubt but that the body of this individual, or his mummy,  is available. So that man will be
  brought back to life." 
  Once more, a pause. 
  "The world does not need inventions." 
  Another moment of silence. 
  "It needs profound wisdom." 
  The final pause, and: 
  "Solomon is the man to be resurrected," said Doc Savage, and went  off the air. 
  FOR the next hour or so, the nation sat around with a doubtful look  and talked. Solomon! Almost no one
  knew whether Solomon's body was  available. And even if it was, it would have to be intact, and that,  after the
  passing of many centuries, was not exactly reasonable to  believe. 
  But the extra editions of the papers enlightened everybody. It  seemed that Solomon's mummy had been found
  not many weeks before! 
  The find had been made by an eminent group of archaeologists,  included among whom was Doc Savage's
  aid, William Harper Littlejohn.  There had been no fanfare in print over the discovery, and nobody had  been
  invited in to make news reels. The gentlemen who had found  Solomon's mummy did not need money or
  publicity; hence the affair had  been quiet.  Solomon's mummy was available. There was not the slightest
  doubt about it. The archaeologists had identified it positively, and  they were too eminent for their words to be
  doubted. 
  Solomon, it seemed, was lying in state in the private museum of  William Harper Littlejohn. 
  General Ino read this and smiled a thin smile. 
  "We are now ready to function further," he said. "The mummy of  Solomon is to be taken to Doc Savage's
  laboratory at ten o'clock  to−morrow morning. We shall be on hand." 
  "You have a really wonderful mind − of its  kind," Proudman Shaster  said, nervously. "Really wonderful. But
  it strikes me you have waited  too long. We have known for days, thanks to your spies, where Solomon's
  mummy was lying. Why haven't we acted before?" 
  "He who eats his fish hastily is most apt to choke on a bone,"  General Ino murmured, singsonging in Chinese
  fashion. 
  "Yeah," said Proudman Shaster. "And it's a fact that the kind of  fish who play with the bait and take it slowly
  usually got hooked in  the stomach." 
  "Velly tlue," agreed Ino. "That's one thing I like about you,  Proudman, my sweet. You always think of the
  worst things that could  happen. It's a very good trait." 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 6. WISDOM
  27
  
  Shaster sighed nervously. "So we put on your next act at William  Harper Littlejohn's private museum?" 
  "Si, si," said General Ino. "We do." 
  WILLIAM HARPER LITTLEJOHN'S private museum had been practically  unknown, but there were at least
  ten thousand people in the block in  front of it before daylight the next morning. The police took one look  and
  decided the hearse that would come for Solomon's remains would need  a police escort. 
  A motor−cycle squad was ordered to be on hand and to wait for the  hearse. 
  At eight o'clock, a hearse drove up to the waiting motorcycle  squad. 
  "Well, we're ready to go get him," said the driver. 
  "I wonder if Solomon isn't going to miss his thousand wives?" a cop  called out. 
  "If I was him," chuckled the hearse driver, "I would." 
  The police motor−cycle squad roared into formation, and acted as a  convoy for the hearse, guiding it through
  the mob toward the building  which held Johnny's museum. The building matched William Harper  Littlejohn
  in architecture. It was taller and thinner than it seemed  any building could be and still not upset. The museum
  was near the  figurative waistline of the thin building, and the hearse driver and  his assistant − both
  nice−looking men − staggered in under the weight  of a wicker basket holding the mummy. The elevators
  were barely large  enough to accommodate the length of the basket. 
  On the way up, half a dozen other nice−looking men got into the  cage. They all got out on the museum floor
  and walked to a door. 
  Johnny looked tall and thin enough to fit into the crack of the  door which he opened a few inches at their
  knock. 
  "We've come for Solomon," one of the men said. 
  Johnny said, "I'll be superamalgamated!" 
  He inade a half gesture at bringing the monocle to his eye, an  empty move because he hadn't needed it for
  years, and nowadays it was a  high−powered magnifier. 
  "You're not the men who were to come!" he snapped, forgetting  himself and using small words. "Monk and
  Ham were to come! You're a  bunch of fakes!" 
  "This ain't a fake!" the spokesman said, and showed Johnny the  business end of the biggest six−shooter he
  remembered having seen  recently. "Open up, long and lean!" 
  Johnny tried to slam the door in the face of the leader. The gunman  lunged at it. Johnny, who was not
  weighty, was bowled across the room.  The door flew open. The men dived insideand into a human tornado. 
  Another man had been in the room. He was a very big fellow,  distinguished by a long, gloomy face and fists
  of stunning size. The  big fists were swinging and he fell upon the men as if the gun the  leader carried meant
  nothing at all. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 6. WISDOM
  28
  
  This was "Renny," or Colonel John Renwick. His arms were enormous,  in keeping with the rest of his huge
  body, which tipped the scales  close to two hundred and fifty pounds. His features had a most  puritanical look,
  one that convinced people that his head consisted of  nothing more than a spoonful of brains. Which was
  wrong, for Renny was  known throughout the world for his engineering accomplishments. 
  "That's Renwick!" barked the man with the gun. "Watch 'im! He's  supposed to be tough!" 
  Renny's toughness was more than supposition, as the men soon found  out. He moved like greased lightning.
  His incredible fists whistled  through the air, pummeled mobsters' heads with blows that echoed  throughout
  the room. 
  One big fist took a man under the chin. The fellow rose straight up  into the air, squirming like a fish that had
  come out of the water,  caught on a hook, and who was trying to shake himself loose. Falling,  he seemed to
  melt against the floor. 
  The fellow had hardly touched the floor when Renny's other monster  fist had another mobster in the same
  position. 
  "I gotta shoot 'im!" yelled the leader of the attacking group. 
  His gun leveled at Renny's heart, roared, spouted flame. 
  RENNY said, "Oof!" very loudly, grabbed the gunman by the throat  and whirled him off the floor bodily. It
  was a breathless feat of  strength. Renny seemed actually going to wring the fellow's neck. 
  Bony Johnny was dancing around, whirling a chair over his head. He  hit a thug with it, and changed the shape
  of the man's shoulder. The  bony archaeologist didn't look it, but he packed a big wallop. The man  screamed,
  fell on the floor, screamed louder and got up again. 
  The fellow jumped around like a jumping jack, as if he didn't know  what he wanted to do, his shoulder pained
  him so much. 
  Johnny looked at the fellow as if he enjoyed the antics. 
  A telephone hit Johnny on the back of the head. He dropped as if  poled. 
  The man who had torn the phone loose and thrown it, ran to it,  picked it up and took aim at Renny. His arm
  whipped forward. Renny saw  the motion, ducked, dived, and got clear. But not the second time. 
  The telephone made clunk! of a noise against Renny's skull. Renny  weaved. Three men pounced on him.
  Feet, fists, finally a clubbed chair,  got Renny down. 
  Gasping and cursing, the raiders fell on Johnny and Renny and tied  them up, all out of breath from their
  exertions. 
  "It's lucky you guys had a baseball player along, like me!" gasped  the man who had thrown the telephone. 
  The one who had fired the shot tore Renny's vest open and looked. 
  "Bulletproof vest!" he snarled. "I oughta shoot you in the eye, big  fists!" 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 6. WISDOM
  29
  
  There was a loud knock on the door. 
  The raiders dragged the two prisoners out of sight; then the leader  went to the door. 
  It was an elevator operator. 
  "What's the trouble?" he asked. "There's been enough noise up here  to darn near shake the building down!" 
  Without batting an eye, the other said, "William Harper Littlejohn  and his friend were throwing some
  smart−aleck newspaper reporters and  cameramen out. They wanted to get a picture of Solomon before he was
  resurrected." 
  "Where did the newspapermen go?" 
  "Down the stairs, probably, if you didn't see them." 
  The elevator operator said, "I thought I heard a shot." 
  "That was a photographic flashlight bulb breaking," grunted the  other. "You tell everybody everything's all
  right." 
  "Yes, sir," said the elevator operator, and went away. 
  The leader went back to his men and said, "Let's get on with the  rest of this!" 
  THEY carried the wicker basket in, opened the lid, and carefully  dumped out something about as long as a
  man. It was wrapped in a sheet.  The care they used with it was extreme. 
  "Where's Solomon?" they asked. 
  "Holy cow!" rumbled big−fisted Renny. "What's all this about?" 
  There was another knock at the door. 
  The leader went to the door, kept his gun in his pocket with a hand  on it, and peered out. 
  "Hell!" he said. "This is a fine time to show up!" 
  Lawyer Proudman Shaster smiled cheerily at the other. 
  "I was waiting downstairs to see how you came out," he said  frankly. "If you had failed to take the fort, I
  would simply have  failed to come up. There was no need of us all taking a chance of  getting caught." 
  "I call that a hell of a note!" snarled the other. 
  "It's my privilege as one of your leaders," said Proudman Shaster.  "I see everything is in hand. That is really
  wonderful, really  wonderful." 
  He whipped out a large purple handkerchief, tied it over his face,  and walked into the room, faking a
  shuffling limp. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 6. WISDOM
  30
  
  "We're trying to make 'em tell which is Solomon," said the gunman.  "There's a lot of mummies here." 
  "Solomon? Yes, of course," murmured Proudman Shaster. Shaster  glanced about, observed a wallpiece
  consisting of two crossed swords, a  battle−ax and a shield. He went over and got the battle−ax down, then
  stood above Renny. The ax glistened as he swung it. 
  "All right," he said. "Which is Solomon?" 
  A shocking change had come over Proudman Shaster. His eyes were too  bright, and he had started breathing
  in short spurts. His gaze was  fixed hungrily on Renny's muscular−looking neck. 
  Suddenly, without another word, he lifted the ax. It was a big  thing. Probably it had chopped off many heads
  in its day. At least it  had been made for that. 
  It would not have taken a psychologist to realize that some queer,  hideous quirk in Proudman Shaster's nature
  made him a madman when he  was in a tense situation with a big sword or an ax in his hand. He had  a mania
  for chopping off heads. 
  He was going to chop off one now, without more fuss about it. 
  "Wait!" Renny yelled. "That one is Solomon!" 
  Renny pointed. 
  Renny had a sense of values. He was not going to lie there and have  his head chopped off simply because he
  did not want to tell this  purple−masked maniac which of the mummies was Solomon. 
  But it was not going to save him! Proudman Shaster bunched his  muscles, and the ax whistled downward for
  Renny's neck! 
  Renny was tied so he could not dodge. He shut his eyes. 
  Slug! 
  "Damn you!" yelled Proudman Shaster. "Why'd you do that?" 
  The leader of the mob snarled shakily, "The guy told you what you  wanted to know, didn't he?" 
  Renny opened his eyes and saw that the ax was sticking in the floor  beside his neck. He gathered that the
  gunman had leaped and deflected  the would−be killer's arm at the last instant. The two were now glaring  at
  each other, and it looked as if there would be trouble. 
  Proudman Shaster finally shrugged. With the ax out of his hands,  sanity had returned. 
  "All right," he snapped. "Take the two prisoners into the other  room. All of you go in there and watch them." 
  "What're you gonna do?" asked the gunman. 
  "I'm gonna switch mummies," said Proudman Shaster. "I'm gonna − I'm  going to exchange the mummy we
  brought with us for that of Solomon." 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 6. WISDOM
  31
  
  THE gentlemanly looking thugs carried Renny and Johnny into the  outer room, then stood over them
  watchfully, guns in their hands. 
  Fully fifteen minutes elapsed. It was such a long interval that the  men became impatient. 
  "What's keeping you?" one called. 
  "Shut up," directed Proudman Shaster from the other room. "I am  changing the wrappings of the mummies.
  Taking the wrappings off Solomon  and putting them on our mummy." 
  "Why?" 
  "Doc Savage must think our mummy, the one we are going to leave  here, is the mummy of Solomon, so that
  he will go ahead and resurrect  it." 
  Renny and Johnny exchanged stunned glances. 
  "Holy cow!" said Renny. "These lugs are trying to get some guy of  their own brought hack to life!" 
  Renny had a remarkable voice. It sounded like a very big animal in  a big cave, highly enraged. 
  Proudman Shaster came out dragging the wicker basket. 
  "Take this," he directed. "It's got Solomon in it." 
  "What'll we do with it?" the gunman wanted to know. 
  "Take it over to the river and dump it with a weight tied to it,"  said Shaster. 
  "But what about the cops − the motorcycle escort?" 
  "Easy. Tell them you were a dummy expedition to get the remains of  Solomon. Tell the cops you were sent
  so the crowd would see you, think  Solomon was gone, and then clear out. Doc Savage would logically do
  that. He don't like crowds." 
  THE men picked up the wicker basket. They all seemed about to  leave. 
  "Wait a minute!" barked Proudman Shaster. "You're forgetting! Only  the two who came with the hearse will
  leave. They can dispose of  Solomon. The rest of you stick here?" 
  "And do what?" 
  "Point guns at Renny and Johnny here, when Doc Savage sends for the  mummy of Solomon," Shaster
  directed. "Renny and Johnny will see that  Doc takes the mummy and don't suspect a thing. Shoot them if they
  don't  act their part." 
  "Righto," agreed the gunman, reluctantly. 
  Proudman Shaster smiled while the two who had arrived in the hearse  struggled out with the wicker basket. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 6. WISDOM
  32
  
  "Everything is going to be really wonderful," Shaster assured them.  "Just do your jobs and don't worry.
  Remember, you have something to  fall back upon as a last resort." 
  He went out. 
  Chapter 7. THE MUMMY SWAPPERS
  THE door made a metallic click behind Proudman Shaster's departing  back, and the leader went to it, tried it
  to make sure it was locked,  then whirled on his aids. 
  "Get the fellows who are hurt out of sight," he directed. "Stick  'em in a closet or something. If any of you
  have got narcotics on you,  give 'em a little to sort of ease their pain." 
  They bustled around. 
  The private museum, instead of being the dark place that such  establishments usually are, was modernistic,
  with a lot of windows.  However, it carried out a one−color scheme of decoration. The purpose  of this was the
  same as the reason for some museums being dark. The  exhibits seemed more effective, stood out better, by
  contrast. 
  "Be sure everything is cleaned up," directed the leader. He came  over toward Johnny and Renny. "I'm gonna
  untie you mugs, after I take  your bulletproof union suits off. And if you make funny moves, you're  going to
  find yourselves bucking a storm of lead. 
  "What is behind this?" Renny asked. 
  "That's our own business," the other told him. "We want a certain  fellow resurrected in place of Solomon.
  We've gone to a lot of trouble  to get that fellow, and we're going to a lot more to get what he − " 
  "There's such a thing as talking too much," a man reminded the  leader, dryly. 
  "Thanks," said the leader, and shut up. 
  Johnny and Renny were relieved of their unusually light alloy  chain−mail undergarments; then they were
  untied and stood on their  feet. 
  "You live here," the leader told Johnny. "Where's the bathroom?  You've got some blood on your puss that
  needs washing off." 
  Johnny grumbled, "I'll show you, you thug!" and led the way to a  plain door. 
  "Perhaps I had better go in first," said the leader of the mob. 
  He opened the door and backed in, covering his prisoners with his  gun. 
  That was a bad move. He never saw his fate in the shape of two  bronze hands that suddenly took bold of his
  neck. The tendons on the  backs of the bronze hands somewhat resembled large round files. The  fingers sank
  deep into the man's neck flesh as if they were steel in  reality, and the leader of the mob was lifted off the
  floor. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 7. THE MUMMY SWAPPERS
  33
  
  He flailed his arms. One of the bronze hands detached and clamped  his arms. The other fist released his neck
  and hit his jaw in a  combination move that took a good eye to follow. 
  Renny and Johnny stood perfectly still. They knew those hands. Doc  Savage! Neither gave a sign to betray
  the presence of the bronze man to  the other members of the mob, who were in a position where they could
  cover Renny and Johnny, but could not see what had happened to their  chief. 
  Doc drew the victim out of sight, deposited him in the bathtub, and  straightened. The bronze man's throat
  tendons tensed, and he held his  mouth in a peculiar position. 
  From his lips came a perfect imitation of the mobleader's voice. 
  "Come in here a minute, a couple of you guys!" Doc invited. 
  ONE of the raiders had been put out of commission in the first  fight with Johnny and Renny. Doc had just
  disposed of a second. There  had been six to start with, excluding Shaster and the two carrying the  wicker
  basket. 
  The four in the room behind Johnny and Renny were now unsuspicious.  Two stepped through the bathroom
  door. They saw Doc−about the time he  took hold of them. 
  "What the − " one managed to gasp. 
  "We'll have to move this thing," Doc Savage said, loudly. "It'll be  quite a struggle!" 
  He had hold of them both in such a way that they couldn't yell. 
  "We'll have to kick the darn thing loose," the bronze man added. 
  The two victims kicked and flailed madly. Time after time, they hit  the bronze man with their fists. Their
  blows seemed to have no effect. 
  "Kick it again," Doc said. 
  The bronze man was imitating the voice of the leader he had  overpowered. 
  The two men he held managed to flail him with their legs. He worked  to get their heads in a position for
  cracking together. 
  "We're just about to make it," Doc said. "Once more! Hit it!" 
  The two heads went thump! and the men stopped struggling. Silence  followed. 
  The talking Doc had done had been pitched in a loud, encouraging  voice. It had led the two in the other room
  to think their companions  were merely doing a bit of heavy work. 
  Doc took advantage of the silence, which would sound like a rest  interval. 
  "We'll have to have more help," Doc called. "Bring the two  prisoners in here and make them help us." 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 7. THE MUMMY SWAPPERS
  34
  
  The rest of it was simple. The two survivors of the mob walked in  unsuspectingly, and Doc, hidden behind
  the door, hit them in turn, one  sharp blow for each, and they fell to the floor. 
  After he had made sure the prisoners were all unconscious, Doc  Savage's flake gold eyes rested on bony
  Johnny. 
  "It might be advisable," he said, quietly, "to move your living  quarters and museum down a little closer to
  headquarters. It took me  almost twenty−five minutes after the alarm rang to get bere. Of course,  there is a
  terrific traffic jam below, but even without that, it takes  too long. We are always in danger. We should be in a
  position to help  each other quickly." 
  "Alarm!" Renny boomed. "What kind of an alarm brought you here,  Doc?" 
  Johnny answered that. "I had my place wired some time ago. For  instance, there are certain spots under the
  rug over which tables  ordinarily sit, or chairs. When the chairs or tables are moved, and the  certain spots
  pressed it rings a bell in Doc's headquarters. I saw to  the pressing." 
  Doc Savage added, quietly, "It just happens that Johnny's fire  escape goes past his bathroom window. Now,
  what happened here?" 
  They told him what had happened. 
  THE police, when Doc Savage got them on the telephone, were not too  happy about being doped by the fake
  hearse. For five minutes, things  crackled. Five minutes, no longer, for that was the interval required  to catch
  the fake hearse. 
  The hearse was driving near the river when two radio−patrol cars  crowded it to the curb. The driver and his
  assistant pulled out their  guns, then took another look at the cops, and changed their minds. 
  A sergeant telephoned Doc Savage about the capture. 
  "Bring them to William Harper Littlejohn's place," Doc requested.  "We will question them, as well as some
  friends of theirs who are  already here." 
  "Yes, sir." 
  The sergeant had considered the request an order, because Doc  Savage held a high honorary commission on
  the New York police force. It  had been given him in recognition of work done in the past. 
  Doc glanced out of the window and saw that the crowd was still  jamming the street − held there because
  word that the bronze man was  present in person had gone around, no doubt. 
  Doc said, "Renny, you watch the prisoners." 
  Renny blocked out his big fists and rumbled, "It'll be a pleasure!" 
  Doc took Johnny, the archaeologist, into the room where the mummy  lay. 
  "They swapped on us?" Doc questioned. 
  "Yes," Johnny said, so puzzled be used small words. "I cannot  understand it!" 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 7. THE MUMMY SWAPPERS
  35
  
  Doc said, "Let's examine the mummy they left for us to resurrect." 
  The mummy was in a plain black case, a modern one. 
  THE cadaver would probably have given an ordinary person the  creeps. It hardly looked lifelike. It was taller
  than an average man,  and had a good breadth of shoulders. An aged man, the mummy had been  quite a
  physical specimen, even at the time of his death. 
  Mummies are usually seen done up in ancient wrappings, but this one  was naked, except for a plain white
  gown such as patients wear before  they are taken into operating rooms. It was split up the back after the
  fashion of such gowns. 
  Johnny scratched his head and looked amazed. 
  "I'll be superamalgamated!" he murmured. "This mummy is of almost  exactly the same period as that of
  Solomon! I can say. positively, that  there is no more than a hundred years difference in their age!" 
  He fingered his monocle, miraculously unbroken throughout the  excitement. 
  "Solomon's physical build and that of this man are practically  identical," he said. "The deception might very
  well have succeeded." 
  He sighed deeply. 
  "I hope they have not damaged Solomon," he finished. "They were  going to throw him into the river." 
  A policeman knocked on the door. 
  "The hearse is downstairs with Solomon," he reported. 
  "What about the two prisoners?" Doc queried. 
  The cop shook his head. "Dead." 
  "What?" 
  "Begorra, it was the queerest thing," the oflicer muttered. "Them  two feilers sat there in the squad car bitin'
  their finger nails; then  all of a sudden they both had fits and died." 
  That seemed to remind Doc Savage. He spun and leaped into the room  where Renny was guarding the
  prisoners. It was a bedroom. 
  Renny waved one big fist. "I spread 'em out on the bed. They're  behavin'." 
  Doc ran to the prisoners, examined them, then glanced at Renny 
  "Did they chew their finger nails any?" he asked. 
  "Sure." Renny admitted. "They were worried. Why not?" 
  Doc Savage said, quietly, "And now they're dead." 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 7. THE MUMMY SWAPPERS
  36
  
  THE story of the dead men got into the newspapers. It couldn't very  well have been kept out. 
  Lawyer Proudman Shaster put a paper bearing the story in front of  General Ino at the small hotel where the
  latter had his headquarters  for the moment. 
  "Quien sabe?" murmured General Ino. "Haven't you ever heard of the  Oriental custom which spies have of
  committing suicide?" 
  "These men didn't commit suicide!" 
  "A mere technicality," stated Ino. "They thought the poison was a  drug that would make them unconscious so
  they could not be questioned." 
  "You told them that!" 
  "Some one must have," grinned General Ino. He leaned forward  suddenly. "Don't be a sap, mine fran'! Those
  men would have told all  they knew! Doc Savage would have made them! This Savage is as clever a  man as
  there is alive to−day! Don't get any other idea. I have been  outfoxing people for many years. It is my trade. I
  am merely trying to  beat Doc Savage at my own game. And believe me, if I succeed, I am  going to retire,
  because it will be the crowning achievement of my  career. There will be no more worlds to conquer." 
  "This one will pay well enough that you can afford to retire,"  Proudman Shaster pointed out. 
  "That's an angle, too," the general admitted. 
  There was a small portable radio in the room, and it began to give  forth a news broadcast as General Ino
  adjusted the knobs. The announcer  was saying that Doc Savage and his aids were on the way to the bronze
  man's laboratory with the mummy of Solomon, which had nearly been  stolen. 
  General Ino, listening, began to chuckle. His chuckle was queer. It  sounded like a hen cackling. 
  "Velly good," he chortled. 
  "You are absolutely satisfied with the way things are going?"  demanded Proudman Shaster. 
  "Perfectly!" exclaimed General Ino. "It is going exactly as I have  planned it. As you might say, my dear
  Shaster, it is all really  wonderful!" 
  THERE was such a crowd around Doc Savage's skyscraper that the  hearse could not get close. They
  transferred the mummy to a subway  train, had the subway stop near Doc's building, and entered the  structure
  by an underground passage which Doc used for leaving and  coming when he did not want to be seen on the
  street. 
  They put the mummy on a white slab in the laboratory. 
  "The public seems to think this resurrection will be a short  affair, merely a matter of turning on a machine,
  and presto−Solomon is  alive," Doc said, addressing homely Monk. "You had better announce  differently." 
  "0. K.," Monk said. "How long will it take, Doc?" 
  "Hours. Maybe days." 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 7. THE MUMMY SWAPPERS
  37
  
  Monk went out to make this announcement. 
  Doc Savage's laboratory was probably exceeded for completeness only  by one other, the existence of which
  the world knew nothing about. Even  Doc's five assistants did not know where it was situated, except that  it
  was at some remote spot on the globe which the bronze man called his  "fortress of solitude," and to which
  Doc visited at intervals to spend  weeks and sometimes months, shut off completely from the world,  studying
  and working out scientific experiments. 
  It was really at this "fortress of solitude" that Doc had perfected  his resurrection process. It was there that he
  had gotten together the  extremely rare chemicals, so rare that even now he only had enough to  revive one
  patient. 
  Monk came back, said, "I told 'em. They didn't believe me, of  course." 
  Monk, whose skill as a chemist was amazing, understood enough of  Doc's process to be of some assistance.
  The others, experts at other  lines, could only stand back and watch. But they were anxious to help. 
  "Anything we can do?" pale Long Tom asked. 
  Doc Savage considered. "There is something sinister underfoot. You  two might make some investigations." 
  The pallid electrical wizard grunted, "But we've got nothing to go  on!" 
  "Renny," Doc said, "you say one of these men to−day, the one with  the mask, sliowed an insane desire to cut
  your head off?" 
  "Holy cow, did he!" Renny boomed. 'I'll say!" 
  "There have been three beheading muirders since this affair of the  resurrection started," Doc told him. "One
  was Carson Alexander Olman of  New York, the other Sir Rodney Dillsworth of England, and the third a  mate
  on a freight steamer. Investigate them. See what you can turn up  that connects the three killings, and connects
  us." 
  Renny, Ham, Johnny and Long Tom immediately went to telephones and  got to work. 
  They spent money on long−distance calls as if it were water to he  dipped up out of an ocean. 
  Doc Savage and Monk filled a large glass tank with a chemical  mixture. The tank was about the size and
  shape of a bathtub, and the  chemical mixture had a reddish tinge. 
  "This is the first step at softening and revitalizing the mummified  tissue," Doc said. "Electric currents passed
  through the bath will  quicken the process." 
  Monk eyed the mummy critically. "He looks like he's gonna take a  lot of revitalizing. If it was anybody but
  you, Doc, trying this, I'd  go out and make myself some money by betting fifty to one that it  couldn't be done." 
  "How about the vital organs being missing?" Renny called from the  library. "Didn't they take the entrails out
  when they embalmed the old  mummies?" 
  "Not in this process," Doc told him. "Preservation was accomplished  by immersion in a bath, the exact nature
  of which has been lost to  knowledge." 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 7. THE MUMMY SWAPPERS
  38
  
  "Reckon the bath was poison?" Monk queried. 
  "Probably," Doc admitted. "We will have to eradicate the poison.  That may take time." 
  Monk stood back and scratched his nubbin of a head. 
  "It's been easy to talk about resurrecting somebody," he squeaked.  "But it begins to look like quite a job all of
  a sudden." 
  IN the library − a huge room containing thousands of scientific  tomes − Renny, Long Tom and Johnny
  worked on three telephones. In the  reception room, Ham kept another line busy. There were occasions when
  Doc Savage needed many telephone hook−ups in a hurry, so he had the  facilities. 
  The bronze man also frequently needed information abruptly. His  five aids were experts at getting it. Not
  only did they do the work  themselves, but they had a number of good detective agencies who would  go to
  work at the drop of a hat. 
  Detective agencies being tools to fight the criminals, Doc Savage  had long ago subsidized a number, and on
  occasion, took a hand in  training their operatives. Since the bronze man paid a part of the  expenses, these
  private detective agencies were able to work cheaply  enough to help many an ordinary fellow take care of
  some personal  difficulty. 
  The private agencies, as a matter of fact, was Doc Savage's method  of taking care of the innumerable calls
  which he received from persons  who were in trivial jams. Little troubles which did not require the  bronze
  man's developed skill were taken care of by the agencies which  Doc had established. 
  Within two hours, Doc Savage's information−gathering machine had  dug up some interesting facts. 
  "There's a connection between the beheadings," Renny reported.  "This Englishman, Sir Rodney, sold
  something to the American, Carson  Alexander Olman. The article sold was shipped on the freighter of which
  the third beheading victim was mate." 
  DOC had the mummy out of the bath now. It looked less like a mummy,  and the bronze man was going over
  it with an X−ray machine. 
  "How did you get your information?" he asked. 
  "From the New York offices of the line which owned the freighter,"  Renny explained. "They had this one
  article, which they had received a  bill of lading or whatever they called it for, but the article never  got here. It
  disappeared somewhere in the process of shipment." 
  Monk said, "It looks as if this article was stolen and every one  who would know anything about it was
  killed." 
  "Any clue as to what the thing was?" Doc queried. 
  "Nope," said Renny. "Except that it was marked down on the  steamship company bill as Pey−deh−eh−ghan." 
  Doc was silent a moment. An almost weird livelihood seemed to come  into his flake gold eyes. "Repeat that
  name!" 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 7. THE MUMMY SWAPPERS
  39
  
  "Pey−deh−eh−ghan," said Renny. 
  Doc was silent. 
  "Pay day again," Renny grunted. "I guess that's the way you'd  pronounce it. Name mean anything to you,
  Doc?" 
  The name obviously did, for there came into being the small,  fantastic trilling sound which was the peculiar
  property of Doc Savage,  the strange thing which he did in moments of mental excitement. It was  not loud but
  every one in the skyscraper headquarters heard it. The  trilling seemed to have a startled quality. 
  "Call the Paris National Museum in France and see if a mummy was  recently sold to Sir Rodney, the
  Englishman who was beheaded," the  bronze man directed. 
  Transatlantic telephone being efficient, Renny was back in fifteen  minutes. 
  "Yep," he said. "Four months ago, the Paris National Museum sold a  mummy named Pey−deh−eh−ghan to
  Sir Rodney." 
  "That explains it," Doc said, quietly. 
  "Explains what?" 
  "Later," Doc told him. "Just now, this resurrecting is taking my  attention." 
  Chapter 8. RESURRECTION!
  THE resurrection was taking the attention of the rest of the world,  too. 
  Almost every one was making a gala day of it. Nothing for years had  so caught public attention. The fact that
  several men had died  mysteriously that morning did not cool the excitement. The  circumstances of the deaths
  were so fantastic that they merely added to  the general fever. 
  Hawkers in the throngs on the street were already selling Solomon  balloons, Solomon noisemakers, and
  handkerchiefs with Solomon's picture  on them. 
  "Solomon ice cream!" they yelled. "As cold as Solomon's thousandth  wife! Five cents!" 
  An enterprising burlesque press agent came out with the  announcements that his entire troupe of beautiful
  girls was going to  offer to marry Solomon. 
  "There's not a thousand of 'em," he stated, modestly, "but they're  so pretty they make up for it!" 
  Bookstores had their windows full of books about Solomon. 
  Signs on the backs of sandwich men parading the streets read, "Be  as wise as Solomon and eat at Jobowski's
  Steak Emporium!" 
  Besides all this cheap display, there was serious talk, and  level−headed editorials. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 8. RESURRECTION!
  40
  
  Some ambitious soul got a finger in the publicity by being the  first to organize a "Solomon for President"
  club. He advocated an  amendment to the constitution so that the president would not have to  be native born,
  just this once. 
  The crowd got thicker around Doc Savage's skyscraper. For blocks, a  peanut could hardly have been dropped
  out of a tall building without  hitting a spectator. 
  Not that there was anything to see, except, after night came, the  brilliantly lighted top floor of the enormous
  building, which was Doc's  aerie. Two dirigibles and umpteen airplanes buzzed around the building,  keeping
  three police aircraft busy chasing them away. 
  DOC SAVAGE had put the mummy through six complicated stages of the  resurrecting process. He was in
  the seventh now, which consisted in  treating the body − it looked like a body now − with ultra−violet and
  other rays. 
  He had explained that this was to replace in it the necessary  vitamins which had deteriorated through the
  centuries. The lights by no  means supplied all the vitamins. Other processes had helped. 
  The bronze giant was completely encased in a germproof white  garment. So was Monk. 
  The others waited in the library. They could see through a glass  door into the laboratory. 
  They stood with their noses flattened against the glass throughout  the night. 
  "It's a miracle!" Johnny stated, watching the mummy become more and  more lifelike. 
  "It's the longest durn miracle I ever had anything to do with!"  complained pale Long Tom. "I wish Doc would
  take a short−cut or  something!" 
  Johnny, the archaeologist, was as excited as a hen whose chickens  are hatching. Johnny believed that
  Solomon, once he was alive, could  solve many great archaeological puzzles. Johnny, as the first man to
  interview him − he intended to write a book, too − saw his name going  down in history. It would probably go
  down in history anyway, but he  was too modest to believe that. 
  "How can you be impatient!" he snapped at Long Tom. "This is the  greatest thing of all time!" 
  "Fooey!" said Long Tom. "I'm tired!" 
  Johnny said, scathingly, "You look something like a mummy yourself,  and it might be a good idea if Doc did
  some resurrecting on you!" 
  "So, you bonepile!" Long Tom sniffed; "For two bits, I'd hang you  out in the wind and listen to you rattle!" 
  Big−fisted Renny put in, "Now, don't you two start Monk−and−Hamming  it!" 
  They grinned at each other. 
  "We're tired," Ham said, dryly. "But look at Doc. He's been working  steadily." 
  "And poor Monk," said Renny. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 8. RESURRECTION!
  41
  
  "Monk!" Ham jeered. "Solomon will take one look at Monk, and think  the human race has gone backward
  since his day!" 
  Monk came to the door. 
  "Doc says you fellows had better get some sleep," he said. "This  may go on and on." 
  MONK called them at four o'clock that evening. 
  "The crowd downstairs is raising cain," he said. "They think the  resurrection has turned out a dud or a fake or
  something, and they're  throwing bricks at the cops. Ain't people funny?" 
  "You are, anyway!" snapped Ham, eying Monk's apish physique. "Why  did you awaken us?" 
  Ham had awakened about every third minute throughout the day. His  nerves were raw. 
  "Solomon is in the last process," Monk said. "Come on in if you  want to see it." 
  They entered the laboratory and stood around, after pulling on  white germproof garments. What they saw was
  so spellbinding that they  at times forgot to breathe. 
  A number of movies, usually the horror type of pictures, had been  made in which people or monsters have
  been brought to life, and Doc's  aids had seen them − even erudite Johnny, who publicly declared movies
  below his dignity, but occasionally slipped out to see one. 
  The motion picture resurrections usually consisted of putting a  corpse under a bunch of big electrodes, showy
  glass vacuum tubes, and a  bearded scientist pushed a switch, after which there was a blinding,  deafening.
  display of electrical sparks. The favorite gag was to tap  the heavens for a lightning bolt. There was always
  enough electricity  in evidence to execute a penitentiary full of convicts. 
  Doc, for his final stage used no electricity at all. He used no  tubes, bulbs nor elaborate apparatus. 
  The only device employed was a long hypodermic needle which he  inserted into the heart, emptied it. 
  Next, be turned the resurrection patient over his knee and spanked  him violently. 
  "The idea!" Monk exploded. "Spanking Solomon!" 
  "Shut up, you baby scarer!" Ham advised. "They spank new−born  children like that. It starts them to
  breathing, or the pain revives  them, or something." He eyed Monk nastily. "They must have forgotten  that in
  your case!" 
  It was characteristic of Monk and Ham that they carried their  quarrel into the most critical situation. so it did
  not surprise the  others that they would still fight while Solomon was being revived. 
  "He's breathing!" Johnny gasped, and pointed. "Solomon is  breathing!" 
  Johnny was jumping up and down in his excitement. 
  The former mummy was undoubtedly breathing. He began to stir. The  stirrings became movement. Finally,
  the patient sat up. His eyes, which  had been tightly closed, opened. He looked around. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 8. RESURRECTION!
  42
  
  The first individual he saw chanced to be the homely Monk. 
  The mummy stared intently at Monk. His eyes shut. He lay down  again. 
  "I knew it!" Ham told Monk. "He saw you, and thought evolution had  backfired! It was too much for him!" 
  HAM was kidding, because they could all see that the mummy was  still breathing. The chap had merely lain
  back to rest. 
  "I will administer some energy in a chemical form which can be  assimilated instantly by his body," Doc said. 
  He did this − with a hypodermic needle. Then he massaged various  parts of the patient's body. He used small
  electrical therapy devices  in this. 
  "Stirring up the circulation," Doc explained. 
  The mummy man on the table had his eyes open. and was looking at  them. He had not moved perceptibly,
  nor spoken. 
  The man was a rather handsome fellow, being tall, robust, with an  aquiline nose and a fine upstanding shock
  of white hair, as well as an  impressive white beard. Doc's revitalizing process had extended with  effect, even
  to the hair, returning its life and luster. 
  Doc said at last, "He should be able to talk now." 
  "But what language will he speak?" Long Tom asked. 
  "The tongue native to his country in his day, of course," put in  bony Johnny. "I happen to know that Doc
  knows enough of that ancient  tongue to converse after a fashion. And I, myself, may be able to do  the same." 
  Unconsciously, they all had spoken in a low voice. The power of the  moment was having its effect on them. 
  Doc Savage stepped back and motioned Johnny forward. 
  "To William Harper Littlejohn will go the honor of first addressing  the patient." 
  Johnny was overcome. It was unexpected. No archaeologist could wish  for a greater moment. 
  Johnny stepped forward. His lips worked, but no sound came. He  tried again. Still no noise. 
  "Holy cow!" rumbled big−fisted Renny. "For once, Johnny can't think  of a big word!" 
  Johnny, fully realizing he had flubbed his great opportunity,  stepped back. 
  Doc Savage spoke to the mummy. The bronze man's voice was  encouraging, inspiring confidence, and the
  words he spoke were, while  slow, well articulated. Johnny realized they were words of the language  of
  Solomon's day, well spoken. 
  The mummy understood. That was obvious, because he looked startled. 
  But the fellow did not answer. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 8. RESURRECTION!
  43
  
  Doc tried again and again. After fifteen minutes, he had no answer. 
  "WE'VE got a speechless Solomon on our hands," complained Monk.  "Imagine that!" 
  Johnny, who was gloomy over his tongue−tied interval, snapped,  "Don't joke about it! This is serious!" 
  Doc Savage had apparently been thinking. 
  "Perhaps association with familiar objects would move him to  speak," he said. "After all, this must be an
  utterly strange  environment." 
  "But what'll we do about it?" Monk asked. 
  "Take him to the Metropolitan Museum," Doc said. "Let him look  around the ancient exhibits." 
  They took their guest who had lately been a mummy to the museum,  and several interesting things happened
  en route. First, the fellow  screamed out in terror when the elevator started downward. 
  The abject fright in the cry moved Monk to mutter in an aside to  Ham, "Solomon ain't a very nervy cuss." 
  Ham said, scathingly, "If the same thing happened to you that's  happened to him, you'd be jittery, too!" 
  They left the skyscraper by the underground route. They had trouble  getting the late mummy into a taxicab
  when they reached the street. 
  Doc blindfolded the fellow. 
  "To spare him a lot of surprise," the bronze man explained. The  Mummy peered about vacantly when they
  first entered the museum.  Although the institution was open to the public, there were no visitors  to−day,
  probably due to the excitement downtown. 
  Doc led the way to exhibits of Biblical times and ancient Egypt.  Immediately, their guest perked up. Doc
  stopped in front of an exhibit  of extremely antique tablets, and watched the strange man he had  resurrected. 
  The fellow became more excited. He shuffled forward and  thoughtfully touched a number of articles. He
  showed great interest in  an ancient picture done in colors so fine that they had withstood the  ravages of
  centuries, deep within the tomb walls on whose stone  corridor they had been painted. 
  Johnny, the archaeologist, said, "Unquestionably, he is genuine!" 
  "Eh?" Monk grunted. 
  "That is his own picture he is studying," Johnny explained. ''It is  a hieroglyphic representation of King
  Solomon." 
  The mummy man glanced from the painting to Doc Savage. He seemed to  be trying to read the bronze man's
  features, but they told him nothing.  This seemed to disturb him. 
  He said something guttural in a strange tongue. 
  Tall, bony Johnny looked as if he had been hit by a lightning bolt. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 8. RESURRECTION!
  44
  
  Doc Savage was startled, too. For the first time his face revealed  surprise. His trilling, ethereal and almost
  without reality, was  audible for an instant − an eerie note. 
  Monk blinked, gulped, "What'n blazes?" 
  Johnny waved the long bones that were his arms. He made explosive  gargling trying to get words out, then
  succeeded. 
  "Pey−deh−eh−ghan!" he squawked. "This − this − fake! He's not  Solomon! He's Pey−deh−eh−ghan!" 
  Chapter 9. THE STRANGE MUMMY MAN
  MONK made fists, a fierce face, and leaped forward. "The crook!  I'll hit 'im so hard he'll turn back into a
  mummy!" 
  Doc got in front of Monk. "Wait. It is not his fault." 
  "Then whose fault is it?" Monk yelled. 
  Doc was silent a moment. 
  "We have one consolation," the bronze man said, dryly. "We are not  taken in often." 
  "You mean we've been foxed?" 
  "Thoroughly," Doc agreed. 
  Understanding apparently exploded like firecrackers in the heads of  Johnny and Renny simultaneously. 
  "Holy cow!" Renny rumbled. "In Johnny's museum! That swap of  mummies! It was a trick! They weren't
  swapped!" 
  Johnny groaned, "Those raiders really hauled off this − this fake!  They made Renny and myself think it was
  Solomon! We told you they got  Solomon, Doc!" 
  "It was our fault," Renny rumbled, gloomily. 
  "This is a heck of a note!" contributed Long Tom. 
  "The American public!" Ham groaned. "They'll mob us!" 
  "That's 0. K.," Renny muttered. "Me and Johnny, here, deserve  mobbing for being taken in like that!" 
  DOC SAVAGE had a quality that his aids thoroughly appreciated. He  never raked anybody over the coals for
  a mistake. They did their best.  He gave them credit for that, and did not criticize. 
  "It seems like a strange thing to say," Doc now informed them  calmly, "but this Pey−deh−eh−ghan may
  prove more interesting than  Solomon, and almost as valuable." 
  Monk looked startled. He jabbed a finger at the mummy man. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 9. THE STRANGE MUMMY MAN
  45
  
  "You mean this − this − Pay Day Again, or whatever his name is, may  be worth something?" 
  Doc said, "That probably explains why he was switched for Solomon." 
  "Pay Day," Renny said, scowling at the mummy man, "just what the  heck is this about? Johnny, you ask him
  that in his lingo." 
  Johnny did so. 
  He got silence for an answer. 
  Doc tried. His results were also negative, but he did not seem  surprised. 
  Johnny said frankly, "I do not get this!" 
  "We will go back to headquarters," Doc decided. "In the library  there are some unpublished notes made by a
  little known archaeologist  who spent most of his life exploring Egypt  and the  Holy  Land.  This  archaeologist
  really deserved considerable notice, but did not get it  because he made no big discoveries. Nothing
  spectacular, that is." 
  They managed to get out of the museum without attracting too much  public notice. The cab driver they hailed
  − the driver of the first  cab, for they had to take two − seemed to have something else on his  mind and did not
  pay them particular attention − until Doc gave him the  address of his headquarters. 
  "Huh! You're going' down to see this guy Solomon − " The driver  turned his head and saw Doc, the mummy
  man, Monk and Ham. 
  The hackey's eyes popped. He jerked a thumb at the mummy man.  "Gleeps! Is that Solomon?" 
  Monk, not lying and not telling the whole truth as an answer, said,  "This is the man we just resurrected, yes." 
  "So that's the guy who had a thousand wives!" He sighed. "What a  man!" 
  Doc had not directed the taxi directly to the skyscraper, but to a  spot abreast of it, on the Hudson River. Here
  stood a huge,  deserted−looking warehouse, the Hidalgo Trading Co., according to the  legend on it, which was
  really a hangar and boathouse housing the  bronze man's armada of conveyances. 
  Not many persons knew the real purpose of the great structure, for  it looked innocent enough, and the cab
  driver certainly did not, for he  shook his head in a puzzled fashion when he let them out, then peered
  curiously at another cab which drew up behind him, carrying Renny,  Johnny and Long Tom, who now
  alighted and hurried forward. 
  A truck came snorting down the street and stopped almost opposite.  Its horn began to blow loudly. 
  There were several lines of queer−looking marks − pictures and yet  not pictures − on the sides of the truck. 
  Doc's voice crashed unexpectedly. 
  "Get under cover!" he rapped. "Quick!" 
  Then guns began to fill the street with a great banging. 
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  IT must have been Doc Savage's reputation for trouble that had the  two taxi drivers on edge. The one to the
  rear slammed his hack into  reverse, raced his engine, and went up the street backward at a speed  somewhere
  near thirty miles an hour. 
  It was too fast. He went over a curb and glass crashed. In the next  instant, driver and car were out of sight in
  an abandoned store. 
  Monk and the rest of Doc's aids dived for cover. 
  The mummy man stood where he was, as if bewildered. 
  Doc's taxi driver popped out of his machine, tried to crawl under  it. He was a fat man and his back was low.
  He got caught. 
  "Owww!" he squawked. "They'll kill me!" 
  Monk and the others were in an entryway. 
  Doc seized the fat taxi driver, yanked him out. The fellow was too  plump to run fast. Doc rushed him to the
  entryway. 
  En route, the bronze man stumbled once, almost fell. It was as if  he had been hit by something. He did
  stumble when he reached the entry.  The others then saw a rip in the back of the bronze man's coat. A  bullet
  had made it. Only the bulletproof undergarments, which Doc  always wore when action was possible, had
  saved him. 
  The entry was closed at the back by a gate which had upright iron  bars as thick as Ham's cane. One bar was
  missing, making a hole wide  enough for a man to squeeze through. 
  The mummy man still stood in the street. He didn't know what  bullets were. That was obvious. 
  "Run!" Monk howled at him. "You'll get killed, Pay Day!" Renny  roared, "He may be a fake, but he's a
  human − now!" 
  Renny lunged for the street. Renny was not shy on courage. He  intended to seize the mummy man, "Pay
  Day," as Monk called him, and  drag him to shelter. 
  Doc grabbed Renny, and without apparent effort, stopped the  big−fisted engineer. 
  "You'll get shot!" 
  "So will Pay Day!" 
  Doc called sharply to Pay Day in the ancient tongue which was  native to the mummy man. 
  The words might have set off a percussion cap in Pey−deheh−ghan. He  put his head down and ran up the
  street as fast as he could. 
  THE taxi driver was trying to get through the hole in the iron  gate. He had his head in, and his body down to
  his third vest button.  He was stopped there. 
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  Doc rapped, "Monk! Your supermachine pistol!" 
  The homely chemist whipped out one of the weapons. They had been  developed by Doc, resembled an
  overgrown automatic, and could pour out  bullets faster than a military machine gun. 
  "Mercy bullets?" Doc asked. 
  "Yep!" 
  The mercy bullets produced unconsciousness only. It was the policy  of Doc and his aids not to take human
  life if it could be avoided. 
  "But I got some demolition cartridges!" Monk added. 
  Monk was inclined to be bloodthirsty. One demolition slug would  tear down a good−sized house. 
  The taxi driver made strangled sounds, caught in the hole in the  iron gate. 
  Gunfire was now a deafening roar. It was coming from windows, from  the big truck in the street − from
  everywhere, it seemed. 
  Doc, superfirer latched to shoot bullets one by one, took careful  aim at the running mummy man's legs. The
  weapon made a clean report. 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan skipped like a man who had stepped on a thorn. He  ran on a little farther. Then he
  stopped, made vague gestures of a man  too tired and sleepy to do anything about a pressing situation, and  laid
  down, loosely, in the street. 
  "Ow!" wailed the taxi driver. "Oh, golly!" 
  Renny yelled, "These bushwhackers are movin' in on us!" 
  It sounded like it. Bullets were hitting all around the little,  compact group. A few got into the niche where
  they had taken shelter.  Ricochets; they were not too deadly. 
  The taxi driver continued his yelling, kicked and writhed. 
  Up the street there was a mushy sort of an explosion, and smoke  gushed out into the street. The gas tank of
  the taxi that had run  backward into the store had exploded. 
  Following that explosion, there was another. Close, too! It knocked  the hats off the little group, showered
  them with brick dust. To say  nothing of what it did to their hearing and nerves. 
  "GRENADE!" Long Tom squawled. "We gotta get out of here! The next  one may 
  Wh−o−o−m! The next one took up a section of pavement and broke off  a fire plug. Water came out of the fire
  plug with a guzzling roar. 
  "Oh, my!" moaned the stuck taxi driver. "To think I've been readin'  dime novels for excitement!" 
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  Monk yelled at the hackey, "Before you get blowed in there so tight  you'll never get out, I better do
  somethin'!" 
  Monk grabbed the cabby and pulled him out of the hole in the iron  bars like a cork out of a bottle. 
  "Oh, oh!" wailed the hackman. 
  Guns and bullets and shouts just about drowned out what he had to  say. 
  Monk, keeping his hold on the fat driver, aimed him for the hole in  the bars and rushed him. 
  "Nix!" squawled the driver. "That hole is too little!" It wasn't.  He went through, but it would probably be
  days before he would be the  same again. 
  Renny, Long Tom, Ham, Johnny went through in quick succession. Monk  looked as if he didn't believe Doc
  would make it. But Doc did. 
  "Oh!" complained the fat taximan. 
  Monk advised, "You better take my advice and run like heck!" 
  "I can't!" 
  The taximan was mistaken. He did. 
  There was a stairway. Doc and his men went up that. 
  Another grenade, a bigger one, took out most of the front of the  building and demolished the area way behind
  them. 
  THE noise had fixed their ears so they had to scream to be heard. 
  "The Battle of the Marne again!" Renny howled. Renny looked as sad  as a dog whose pups had died. That
  meant he was very happy. Action  affected him that way. 
  "Windows!" Doc Savage rapped. "Your machine pistols!" 
  The bronze man did not waste many words giving orders. He did not  need to. 
  Some of the windows still had glass. They knocked that out. The  enemy shot into the breaking windows,
  making removal of the glass a  quick job. 
  Monk got into a room where there were two windows, one with glass,  one without. He broke the one with
  glass. Bullets stormed in. 
  Monk let his superfirer roar at the glassless windows. The weapon  sounded like a stick on a picket fence at
  sixty an hour. 
  "Yeow!" Monk squawled. "I got two of 'em!" 
  "Crazy as a hoot owl!" Ham told the fat taxi driver. "He always  gets that way when somebody shoots at him!" 
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  "I d−don't blame h−him!" stuttered the hackey. 
  Down in the street, men appeared. They ran toward the mangled  areaway. They had grenade sacks on their
  belts and gas−mask sacks  around their necks. They wore tin hats and carried automatic rifles. 
  "Nine − eleven − thirteen," Renny said, counting. "And one more so  far behind that I won't count him." 
  Renny's superfirer − all of Doc's men carried them − let out a  moan. The charging men did not go down at
  once. But in a moment they  fell. Some took a few jumps more than others. 
  Doc Savage had Long Tom's superfirer now. He had been to one side,  shooting single shots, not making
  enough noise to take much attention. 
  Each of his shots was getting a man. 
  "Quick!" the bronze man rapped suddenly. "Demolition shells!" 
  The others − except the taxi driver − lunged to his side to see  what was happening. 
  "Holy cow!" Renny rumbled. 
  A car was coming down the street. It had a quiet motor, or the  uproar had kept them from hearing it. The
  machine was black. 
  It headed for the prone form of Pey~deh−eh−ghan. 
  "Gonna run over 'im!" Monk howled. 
  THE car did not run over the mummy man. It stopped beside him,  almost on him, and in such a position that
  the car was between where  Doc and his men stood and the mummy man. The car door opened and men  got
  out to pick up Pey−deh−eh−ghan. 
  "Demolition cartridges!" Doc rapped again. 
  Monk nearly tore his clothing off in a search. 
  "Lost them!" he croaked at last. 
  Renny said, "Here − I've got−mine!" He got the small drum of them  out, passed them to Doc, and the bronze
  man clipped them into the  superfirer which he held, then leaned out of the window to take a  deliberate aim at
  the street back of the car. The machine was backing  up now. The mummy was inside. 
  Doc fired once. There was a roar. Bricks fell off cornices; windows  which had withstood the grenade
  concussions broke. The street back of  the car opened up a hole and a cloud of dust, fire and smoke. Concrete
  pavement chunks stacked as if they were broken ice. 
  The car had been blown backward, but not over. It was against the  curb, water from the broken main scooting
  around it. 
  Monk howled, "Boy, we've got 'em stopped!" 
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  He added a lot more, most of it just whooping and hollering and  squawling. He stopped every once in a while
  to punctuate it with a moan  from his superfirer. 
  But the car had not been disabled. It began to travel, fast, and  straight ahead. 
  Doc Savage aimed the superfirer to put another demolition shell  ahead of the car and stop it. 
  One lone gun banged up the street. 
  Doc Savage flopped back into the room and onto the floor. 
  The car ran away with Pey−deh−eh−ghan. 
  Chapter 10. THE PIRATE PHARAOH
  MONK squawled, "Doc! You're shot!" He sprang for the bronze man. 
  Doc Savage rolled to get away from the window. 
  A grenade went off outside. Obviously, Doc had seen it coming, and  that was why he had ducked, or why he
  had rolled. Perhaps the bullet  was the reason for his ducking. 
  The concussion of the grenade caused the shape of the wall to  change. It bulged somewhat. 
  "Oh, oh!" groaned the cab driver. "I'm sure gonna get killed!" 
  Ham, sword cane tucked under one arm, began shooting from a window. 
  Doc ran out of the room, up more stairs, and gained the roof. The  roof next door was higher by two stories.
  Doc got on top of it by using  a silk cord with a collapsible grapple. He took this from his clothing. 
  There was a man creeping across the other roof, a sack of grenades  in his hands. He did not see or hear Doc −
  until the bronze man was on  the roof. Then he made a mistake. He tried to get a grenade out of his  hag, but
  couldn't do it before Doc whipped forward and upon him. 
  He was not big enough to give even an ordinarily strong man much  trouble. Doc knocked him senseless and
  took away his grenades. 
  Doc had come to this roof in hopes of sighting the fleeing car  which had taken Pey−deh−eh−ghan. He had no
  luck. If it was near enough  to be seen, buildings hid it. 
  Using his silken cord and grapple again, the bronze man slid down  to a fire escape. He discharged two mercy
  bullets on the way down. Both  times he dropped men who were about to shoot at him. 
  He went to a telephone, called the police, described the  Pey−deh−eh−ghan car, then went back to the war
  front. 
  There was not much war left. Monk was stamping up and down the  street, offering a big, hairy target, and
  squawling for somebody to  come out and fight. He had all the noise to himself. 
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  "They vamoosed," Renny told Doc. 
  "Not all of them, though," Long Tom put in. "I judge we laid out at  least fifteen of 'em." 
  The fat taxi driver ventured into the street while they were  gathering unconscious enemies − the mercies had
  killed no on − and  piling the forms in a bunch. The hackey peered about, as nervous as a  rabbit that had
  crawled into a dog kennel by mistake. 
  "Much obliged," he mumbled. 
  "For what?" Monk wanted to know. 
  "Well, I didn't get killed," gulped the driver. 
  "Stick around. It ain't over." 
  "That's just what I'm afraid of," said the taximan. "So long!" 
  He lit out running and never looked back. 
  DOC SAVAGE explained to the police. They helped carry all the  senseless prisoners into the big Hidalgo
  Trading Co. warehouse, where  Doc put the captives in a bullet−shaped car which traveled through an
  underground tube to his skyscraper headquarters. He had constructed the  tube for quick service between the
  two places. 
  On the headquarters hallway they found some lines of strange  characters that were half picture and half
  symbol. 
  "I am going to read this one," bony Johnny declared. "I did not  have time to translate the other one, which
  was on the side of that  truck which stopped in the street and started the fight." 
  Doc Savage said, "Both inscriptions were the same." 
  "Huh!" Monk put in. "What is this, anyway?" 
  "It is a hieroglyphic warning," Doc Savage said. "It is addressed  to Pey−deh−eh−ghan, and tells him that we
  are his enemies and he should  escape from us at the first opportunity." 
  "So that's why Pay Day ran for it!" Monk barked. 
  "Yes." 
  Monk snorted doubtfully. "They must have had warnings to Pay Day  written all around, so he would be sure
  to see at least one." 
  This was true. Later, when they checked, Monk and the others found  identical hieroglyphic warnings painted
  on the doors of their private  apartments. Inquiring around, they also learned that the ambush at the  warehouse
  was only one of many traps that had been set. They could  hardly have missed barging in upon the enemy. 
  Big−fisted Renny rumbled, "This bozo who pulled a fast one on us  sure didn't overlook any bets. But, at least,
  we've got some prisoners  now, and that means we can get some information." 
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  52
  
  "If they don't chew their finger nails," Monk said grimly. 
  "We will take care of that," Doc declared. 
  They stripped each prisoner and submerged him in a chemical bath  which would render the
  under−the−finger−nail poison harmless. 
  "Now," Doc Savage announced, "while they are regaining  consciousness, we will check up on the known
  history of  Pey−deh−eh−ghan." 
  Doc spent some time in the great library. It was noticed that he  did not peruse books, but rather pamphlets
  containing speeches and  scientific records made available to archaeological societies. 
  Finally he put the records away and made, very briefly, his small  trilling. "There can be no other
  explanation." 
  "If there's any explanation," Monk groaned, "I don't know what it  is." 
  "Pey−deh−eh−ghan was a Pharaoh in Egypt about the time of King  Solomon's reign," Doc Savage explained. 
  "A king in Egypt, eh?" 
  "He was known as the 'Pirate Pharaoh,'" Doc continued. "He got that  name from his insatiable thirst for
  sacking cities and gathering  wealth." 
  Johnny had been listening, tumbling absently with his monocle. Now  he dropped the monocle. 
  "My memory is jogged now!" he exploded. "Pharaoh Pey−deh−eh−ghan  was so greedy he insisted on taking
  the loot from his conquests with  him, and he caused a great tomb to be built and filled with his  valuables.
  Then he put a curse on the tomb, which was far out in the  desert somewhere − the Nubian Desert, it is
  believed. The tomb has  never been found." 
  "The light," Monk said, "is dawning." 
  HAM, who liked to pick discrepancies in any story he heard − a  relic of his law training − said, "This story
  doesn't hang together!" 
  "How you figure?" Monk bristled. 
  "If they've never found Pey−deh−eh−ghan's tomb, how come they found  his mummy?" 
  Johnny explained that promptly. 
  "Pey−deh−eh−ghan attacked King Solomon and died in the campaign,"  he said. "He was entombed away
  from home, and the body was embalmed by  his foes, namely, King Solomon's experts. That accounts for the
  similarity in embalming which did a lot to fool us." 
  Monk took two or three stamping turns around the office, then  stopped and glared dramatically at Ham. 
  "It's plain!" Monk squeaked. "We were tricked into reviving Pay  Day! This mysterious master mind who's
  fighting us snatched Pay Day and  is gonna make 'im tell where the tomb is!" 
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  Ham snarled, "Don't scowl at me, you ape!" 
  Johnny groaned, "If we only knew who we're fighting!" 
  They got that information from their captives. Doc got the fellows  taiking very easily. The bronze man
  simply explained about the  poison−under−the−finger−nails trick. 
  Doc further explained that the present prisoners had also carried  the same poison, not under their nails, but in
  their hair. A quick  analysis of the chemical nullifier bath, made by Monk, had indeed  divulged this
  information. 
  The prisoners realized they had a chief who would have sacrificed  their lives to keep them from talking. They
  drowned each other out with  their angry shouting of information. 
  Their chief had stolen the mummy of Pey−deh−ah−ghan, killing every  one who might give information. A
  trick had been worked to get the  mummy man back so that he could be persuaded to reveal the whereabouts
  of the treasure tomb. 
  Doc had guessed as much. 
  General Ino, international crook, was the leader. 
  He had an assistant named Proudman Shaster, a lawyer. 
  That was all the prisoners knew, except a lot of minor details of  no great value. 
  "General Ino," Doc Savage said, and although his voice was low, it  had a grim quality − "an almost legendary
  figure, so clever that he has  managed to remain almost unknown. Several times I have made efforts to  get on
  his trail, knowing that at some time or other we would tangle." 
  Monk scratched his nubbin of a bead. "General Ino, if you ask me,  is the slickest article we've hit in some
  time." 
  "Where d'you suppose he is now?" Renny pondered. 
  "On his way to Egypt, doubtless," Doc said. "We'll do some  checking." 
  ABOUT that time, General Ino was saying. "Ever'ting, she ees go too  dam' smooth, oui! We mus' be more
  careful, monsieurs." 
  He sounded like a Frenchman who had learned English that year. 
  "Seems to me it is all really wonderful," murmured Proudman  Shaster. 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan said something which, if translated, would hardly  have been printable. He glowered at the
  shiny steel handcuffs on his  wrists. 
  The rest of General Ino's men said nothing. 
  The dirigible engines made a great deal of noise. It was supposed  to be a very modern airship − a dirigible,
  not an airplane − with  silenced motors. But there was a racket, lots of it. A whopping drone. 
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  The Atlantic Ocean was below, so far down that it looked strange  and smooth. 
  "Doc Savage will, of course, learn that we have taken passage for  Germany on this dirigible," said General
  Ino, reverting to good  English. "He will have the entire German police force on hand when the  airship is
  due." 
  Proudman Shaster gaped in horror. He didn't think that was so  really wonderful. 
  "But," murmured General Ino, "we shalt take measures." They took  measures. They took over the dirigible at
  the  point of a gun. They  made the radio operator radio that the ship was down, burning, in the  middle of the
  Atlantic. After that they kept the radio silent. 
  The airship's legitimate passengers − there were not many, for  General Ino had booked most of the seats, or
  cabins, for his aids −  were lined up and shot, and the bodies dropped into the sea from three  miles up. Some
  of the crew were shot for a demonstration. 
  All of the crew were shot once the ship had landed in the Nubian  Desert, days later. Then the airship was sent
  into the air, without a  soul aboard, and its "iron mike" or automatic pilot − a device with  which the airship,
  like modern passenger planes, was equipped − was set  to the east and south. 
  "Bueno!" exclaimed General Ino, as the great cigar craft took the  air. "I hope it will fall into the Red Sea and
  never be seen again." 
  Proudman Shaster − he looked like an explorer in his pith helmet  and shorts − grumbled, "I think we should
  have burned it here." 
  General Ino shook his head. "Nein! Doc Savage, dot feller will  guess vot happen, an' he come hunting. Ja. If
  be find dot burned ship  here, it woof put him too near our trail." 
  The dirigible droned away to the southeast, just as if its crew was  aboard. 
  General Ino and his cavalcade took out across the desert sands.  They carried full equipment for their
  surroundings. 
  A line of almost black, snaggle−toothed mountains to the west was  their destination. 
  Chapter 11. AIR FANGS
  THE great transatlantic service dirigible came down at two hundred  miles an hour and stuck her pose in the
  sand near Jiddah, which was in  Arabia, just across the Red Sea. The first hundred feet of her got  mashed back
  into the rest, but there was no fire, thanks to some of the  things man has learned about building big airships.
  Learned at the  expense of quite a few lives. 
  The equivalent of the chief of police of Jiddah ran out, took one  look at the airship, drew his pistol, had his
  men do likewise, and kept  all spectators and thieves away from the wreck. 
  Twelve hours later, Doc Savage, his five aids, the pig Habeas, the  apelike what−is−it, Chemistry, and much
  equipment in metal cases  arrived. Their big metal plane was streaked with grimy oil, and Doc's  aids, if not
  Doc himself, looked like men who had just flown the  Atlantic, as they had. 
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  In the dirigible control cabin, Doc found the iron mike intact. He  saw the course on which it was set. 
  Doc sent several small, ordinary weather−observation balloons aloft  and watched them with a strong
  telescope. He got together, by radio,  what dope there was on the air currents over the Red Sea and the Nubian
  Desert part of Africa. 
  "We will make a stab at backtracking the airship," he said. 
  It was a good stab. Perhaps it would not have been good if Doc,  using very strong binoculars, had not
  observed many black specks on a  rocky stretch of ground. 
  They − or Doc − put the big plane down on sand that was so hot that  it dried instantly when they spat upon it.
  They went over to look at  what the buzzards were interested in. 
  It was the crew of the dirigible. The bodies had been hidden. 
  It took a lot to horrify Monk. But he was grim and silent on the  way back to the plane, and didn't even burst
  out when the what−is−it,  Chemistry, sprang upon his pet pig, Habeas, to forcibly hunt for fleas,  something
  that Monk usually considered a personal insult to himself. 
  "From now on," he mumbled, "the word devil is spelled G−e−n−e−r−a−l  I−n−o." 
  Doc Savage did not take the controls to lift the plane into the  air, as they had expected. Instead, he got out a
  small radio  transmitter receiver no larger than a cine camera of fair size. He took  concentrated food tablets
  which he had developed to give quick  nourishment to patients in hospitals, but which was also good ration
  for a man traveling hard. 
  Doc added to the pack flask containing, not water, but the chemical  parts of water, minus the unneeded
  ingredients. He added some of his  gadgets and remarkable chemicals which he might use in his unusual
  method of fighting. 
  "Look here!" Renny protested. "You're not going to leave us here  while you go off trying to trail those
  fellows?" 
  "Stick close to the plane," Doc directed. "And keep your radio in  tune with my set." 
  The bronze man walked away, circling at first, then apparently  finding a trail which led westward. The heat
  waves took sight of him  away from them shortly. 
  The waves looked eerie, like a hideous sea separating them from a  line of ominous, black, toothy mountains
  in the west. 
  THE bronze man's five aids got inside the plane and turned on the  air conditioner which soon cooled them
  off. The outside thermometer on  the control panel registered a temperature of over a hundred and  thirty, part
  of it probably due to the radiation of the sand. But they  had iced drinks and a cold meal which they did not
  eat very heartily. 
  The radio informed them that Doc had found a trail. 
  "But stay where you are," the bronze man said. "Sighting the plane  in the air would warn the enemy,
  wherever they have gone to." 
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  Static bothered them a bit on the radio. They watched the buzzards  until Johnny, a bit of a psychologist,
  suggested that it wasn't raising  their spirits any. 
  "Blasted murderers!" Ham gritted, and began putting fresh dope on  the tip of his sword cane. 
  "One of them is a lawyer in good standing." Monk suggested  pointedly. 
  Ham glared. "And you don't seem to be the only one who hasn't  advanced much beyond the animal stage!" 
  Monk yelled, "That's a danged insult, you clothes rack!" 
  Ham studied Monk's homely, wrathy visage. 
  "If I had that puss," he said, "I would certainly visit a good  false−face maker." 
  Pale Long Tom groaned, "I guess we're in for hours of you two  guys!" 
  They were. Five hours, to be exact. By that time, Monk was outside  in the heat, whither Ham had chased him
  at the point of the doped sword  cane. What Monk was saying about Ham's ancestors, pig−eaters all of  them,
  according to Monk, was interesting if not true, and so enraging  to Ham that the dapper lawyer was holding a
  chunk of ice − secured from  the plane's galley refrigerator − to his head. 
  Monk stopped reciting suddenly and pointed. 
  "Look!" he yelled. "A lot of guys in their nightshirts on  horseback!" 
  They were Arabs, nearly two dozen in number. They rode  picturesquely, not sparing their horses, which
  looked like good animals  from a distance. 
  Renny took the plane's controls and readied the ship for a  take−off. Long Tom and Johnny manned their
  superfirers. Ham did nothing  but stand at the plane door with his sword cane and keep Monk from  getting in. 
  Another group of Arabs appeared behind the first group. All of  these rode camels instead of horses, and some
  led other camels bearing  packs. 
  The Arabs on horses stopped a good three hundred yards away. One  man rode out ahead. With a considerable
  show, he stuck his rifle stock  in the sand and left the weapon there. 
  "He means peace, I reckon," Monk said, still outside the plane and  sounding relieved. 
  The Arab rode up and asked them in pretty terrible English if they  would buy some nice fresh dates, very
  excellent dates, most pleasing to  eye and palate. 
  Ham began, "We do not need any food of − " 
  "We'll take a few!" Monk interrupted, addressing the Arab. "Have  one of your men bring them." 
  The transaction was completed. The Arabs stood around at a  distance, eying the plane. Then they all strung
  out over a near−by sand  dune. 
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  "Dates!" Ham sneered at Monk. "What we need is a member of this  expedition to take your place! One with
  ten cents' worth of gumption!" 
  Monk pretended not to hear and got out his chemical analysis kit. 
  MONK'S kit contained a device, spectrascopic in principle, for  analyzing that was a whiz. He worked with
  some of the dates and his  contrivance for perhaps two minutes. 
  "I thought so!" he exploded. 
  "You never think!" Ham opined. 
  "These fruity titbits are poisoned," Monk announced. "The poison is  the same that friend General Ino used to
  kill off his men in New York  to keep them from talking." 
  Ham gulped, yelled, "Those Arabs are − " 
  "Sh−h−h!" hairy Monk admonished. "They're doubtlessly waiting over  on yon sand dune to see us die!" 
  They went into a conference about what to do. 
  "It's a shame to disappoint them fellers," Monk declared. "I  figured 'em for phonies, an' bought some of them
  dates just to see." 
  "Suppose you continue your brilliant deductioning and tell us what  to do about this?" Ham suggested. 
  "Play dead," Monk said promptly. "They will then charge over the  sand dune, get close; then we'll let 'em
  have it!" 
  "Not a bad idea," big−fisted Renny agreed. "We're going to have to  fight 'em, so we might as well give 'em a
  kick in the slats they ain't  expecting." 
  They got out under the plane's wings, where it was very hot, and  made a fuss about sampling the dates, but
  actually eating only some  which they took from their own stores. 
  The dates had been in two big baskets, and they stood about these  for a while, as if talking. 
  Monk doubled over, grabbed his stomach, and put on a realistic show  of dying. They had seen the poison's
  effects in New York, so their  acting was very good. In the course of the next five minutes, they all  "died."
  With their supermachine pistols under them. 
  The hot sand began to drum with the beat of hoofs. 
  "The charge of the surprised brigade!" Monk chuckled, grimly. "I  mean, they ain't surprised now, but they're
  gonna be!" 
  There was a terrific report. Sand blinded them − sand and something  else that was awful on their eyes and in
  their lungs. 
  "Date basket − blew up!" Renny squawled. 
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  "False bottom in it!" Monk croaked, dazed. "Gass − of some − kind!" 
  A dozen seconds later, they were all completely blinded. 
  SURPRISE had turned out to be a surprise, and their one hope was  the plane. They might get off without
  cracking. 
  Long Tom found the plane's door first. He couldn't see a thing, but  he could feel. 
  "Over here!" he yelled, and kept yelling. 
  The other lunged to him. They got through the plane's door. Monk  was last. Then be heard an excited
  squealing behind him. 
  "Habeas!" he howled. "Habeas! We gotta wait for Habeas!" 
  "Nix!" Ham barked. "Habeas is an Arabian hog anyhow, isn't he?" 
  He was. Monk had got him in Arabia, long ago. But he had no ideas  about leaving him. This was Africa,
  anyway. Monk leaned out of the  door, calling. 
  Renny got the motors turning and fed them the gun. 
  He might as well have waited for Monk to get his pet hog. It made  no difference. They weren't going to
  escape. 
  An attacker rode a dumb camel in front of the plane, then dived  off, so that the plane hit the camel but not the
  man. The ship skewered  around, and a propeller dashed part of the camel through one wing. The  plane ran on
  a short distance before it turned a somersault. 
  Habeas Corpus, the pig, took one look at the Arabs. He showed  judgment, spun, and traveled, only somewhat
  slower than a rusty bullet,  over the sand until he was out of sight. 
  The men in the plane were unconscious. The gas had done that. But  it did not last long. Half an hour, and
  they could see, hear, and  suffer. 
  There were Arabs all around them, and one white man − Proudman  Shaster. 
  "This is really wonderful," Proudman Shaster murmured. "To think  that we bagged all five minnows in one
  net!" 
  Monk scowled at him, then at the buzzards circling above. He spoke  with his eyes on the buzzards, but
  addressing Shaster. "I bet they get  you, yet." 
  Shaster, unworried, asked, "Where is the big fish, Doc Savage?" 
  "You're wasting your time askin' us that," Monk growled. 
  "Yes, I expect I am," Shaster agreed. "So I won't ask. I'll just  take you along, and proceed with plans." 
  Monk wet his lips uneasily. "Yeah?" 
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  "Of course," chuckled Shaster. "Didn't you ever hear? They use live  bait to catch the biggest game fish. It's
  really wonderful how live  bait works." 
  The Arabs seemed to be some robber band whom General Ino and  Shaster had hired. This desert was full of
  roving groups who had no law  except the bloody impulses of their own greed. They did not burn the  plane. 
  "The smoke might be seen by Doc Savage," said Shaster. They knocked  the essential parts of the craft to
  pieces. Just as they got under way,  one Arab raised his rifle and aimed deliberately at the pig, Habeas  Corpus,
  who stood on a sand dune at some distance. The rifle banged. 
  Habeas went up straight and over−backward, head−over−hoofed down  the sloping sand, and was lost to sight. 
  They knocked Monk in the head just as he got his hairy hands on the  throat of the rifleman. 
  Chapter 12. BLACK MOUNTAINS
  THE pig, Habeas, found Doc Savage near midnight. 
  Desert nights are supposed to be clear. This one was cloudy, so  black the bats weren't even out. Desert nights
  are also popularly  supposed to be cool, and this one was almost as hot as the day had  been. In the east, the
  sky was red with sheet lightning and bolt  lightning, and there was a steady rumble like Niagara Falls. 
  Doc had stopped. He might have gone on trailing with his  flashlight. It was spring−generator operated, hence
  no battery to  exhaust. But the light might be seen. He had stopped. 
  The pig was breathing loudly. Pigs are not built for running a long  distance, although this one did have dog
  legs and plane−wing ears that  might help some. 
  Doc Savage said nothing. He did not even make his trilling. He  simply gathered Habeas under an elbow and
  began running back the way he  had come. 
  The glare, the roar of the lightning came closer like the charge of  astral Titans. Its roar grew and grew, with a
  mushy quality. It was as  if a lot of exploding cannons and big tin cans were smashing around in  an ocean in
  the sky. It got overhead, and the wind hit. 
  It was quite a wind. It took big sand dunes apart in clouds. Sand  moved in whistling strings, in volleys. The
  clouds seemed thick enough  to walk on. 
  Doc kept going. His coat was tied.around his face, over his eyes,  ears, nose, mouth. He had Habeas's head
  jammed into a pocket. 
  When the rain hit, it was as if they had fallen into an ocean. Warm  rain, mixed at first with sand. 
  It left as quickly as it had hit, and went thumping and mumbling  and sucking across the desert. Satan in
  retreat, dragging his  environment with him. 
  The plane, when Doc found it, looked as if it had been there many a  year. The sand had half buried it, had
  blown into the open cabin doors.  The water had packed it. 
  Doc Savage made a big circle of the vicinity before he went close.  He saw nothing alarming. Then he went
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  over the plane. 
  Habeas, the pig, ran in sniffing, squealing circles. He was  baffled. 
  There was only one interesting thing. A bottle. Tied to the control  wheel. A paper was inside. 
  SAVAGE: 
  YOU HAVE SMOKE BOMBS ABOARD, I SEE. SET  ONE OF THEM OFF BEFORE  FOUR O'CLOCK
  TOMORROW  AFTERNOON TO SHOW YOU ARE WILLING TO DICKER.  NO  BOMB, AND FIVE
  MEN, FRIENDS OF YOURS, WILL  HAVE THEIR EYES PULLED OUT. 
  A signature was hardly necessary. 
  Not much of their equipment had been taken. It had been stacked  neatly, perhaps so that it could be secured
  later. 
  Doc Savage went immediately and got one of the smoke bombs. But be  also got an alarm clock, some wire,
  some string, and the mechanics from  a hand grenade which made it explode. He used also a little powder
  from  the grenade. 
  He rigged up a contraption which would set off one of the smoke  bombs at three forty−five the next
  afternoon. 
  Then he set out across the desert, leaving bomb and plane, with  Habeas at his heels. Doc carried a heavy
  equipment pack. 
  THE black mountains looked as if they stuck up straight out of the  sandy desert, and they did. In the bright
  moonlight, the sand around  them was almost white, and any moving dark object easily seen. 
  Doc wore one of the white, sheetlike robes of the desert natives,  which he had brought from the plane. Their
  supplies included these.  Habeas, tied up in white cloth, had sense enough not to tear the  covering off − after it
  was coated with a bitter chemical which he  didn't like. 
  They went into a canyon that was like something a great knife had  cut deeply. Warm stillness was
  everywhere. Sounds they had made out in  the desert had carried, but in here they didn't. 
  Doc had located the nearest high peak from the desert. He was on  top of it when the sun came up. 
  It had been cold before the dawn. This height was much cooler. But  the rising sun seemed to throw off as
  much heat as light. Thirty  minutes after the first spurting glare topped the horizon, Habeas was  panting. 
  Doc Savage had a monocular that was as long, almost, as the old sea  captain's spyglasses, and as powerful as
  some telescopes. Even his  nerveless hands could hardly hold it steady enough. It had a small  tripod, a
  mechanical swivel with microscopic screws. 
  He kept his eye to the monocular, and studied all of the mountains  within reach. He recessed only when it
  was long past the hour when even  the laziest man would have arose. 
  A single metal case comprised most of Doc's pack. It was packed  tight. He took out a tiny balloon − the same
  kind he bad used to get  wind direction back at the town where the dirigible had crashed − and a  spool
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  containing two thousand yards or so of fine silk thread. 
  He fastened a tiny camera to the balloon. The camera had been  developed for this work. It took pictures at
  one−minute intervals, or  whatever intervals the tiny watchwork was set for. It could take over a  hundred.
  They were very tiny. 
  Doc did a little doctoring on the balloon. He blacked some strips  of his white silk shirt with ink, and fastened
  them, one on each side,  and one at the back of the balloon. 
  When he sent the balloon up, it looked just a bit like a buzzard.  One of any number of buzzards over the
  black, grim mountains. 
  The developed pictures showed one thing only. There were canyons  which could not be photographed unless
  one was directly over them. It  was something like the Grand Canyon country of the United States, only  this
  rock was black. 
  Doc had the balloon and camera up again, and was using the  monocular. 
  Out on the desert, a string of black smoke crawled upward. The  clockwork had set off the smoke bomb at the
  plane. 
  Doc, with the monocular, saw a dozen white−robed men on fast horses  gallop out from tlie mountains. They
  were to the west. Three more  groups appeared. Others appeared from sand dunes far out on the desert.  All
  rode madly for the plane. 
  It was a big trap that was not going to catch anything. Doc hauled  down the camera, put the film through the
  tiny instant−developer tank,  and viewed it under a glass with microscopic power. 
  There were several pictures showing a group of men in a canyon  mouth near the desert. Doc got into motion,
  heading, for that point,  but almost directly opposite. 
  THE bronze man had made a plain trail thus far. They could track  him from the plane across the desert. They
  could tell they had been  tricked. And they were almost certain to follow the bronze man's  tracks. 
  Doc had figured on that. And he carefully made plain tracks. 
  He traveled an almost straight line, as if he had a definite  destination, but his trail followed the high places,
  and the edges of  cliffs. And finally he found that for which he searched. 
  It was a cliff, straight up and down for almost a thousand feet,  except for a ledge about halfway down. The
  ledge was covered with  jagged rocks. 
  Doc used his silken cord and grapple − he always carried it − to  get down the face of the cliff. That, and his
  fabulous strength. 
  He made a dummy on the ledge. It was more than his clothing stuffed  with sand and a few tough, dried
  bushes. In the legs, the torso, the  head, he put bottles containing a fluid that was made red with  chemicals. He
  arranged the body so that it could be seen in part from  the cliff's top. Then he climbed back up. 
  He broke loose a bit of rock on the cliff rim, so that it would  look as if he had fallen. 
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  They would trail him here, see the form below, think it was Doc's  body, and shoot into it. They would be
  almost certain to do that last.  And the red fluid would run, leading them to think they had finished a  wounded
  man. 
  There was about as much chance of them climbing down the cliff to  the ledge as there was of them going to
  the good place when they died. 
  "Stay here," Doc told Habeas. 
  Habeas remained. That would make it more realistic, as if the pig  had stood by the spot where the bronze man
  had died. 
  Habeas could take care of himself. 
  THE group of men which the aerial camera had showed in the canyon  near the desert were not there when
  Dcc Savage arrived. But their  tracks were, and they led back into the mountains. 
  Doc followed the trail. Rather, he paralleled it, keeping well to  the right or left, crossing the trail at times to
  make sure it was  still where he thought. A precaution, that, in case they had left  watchers. Doc left no
  noticeable footprints himself. 
  There was a watcher. A white man in a pith helmet and shorts. He  sat on a ledge at the far end of a narrow,
  high−walled crack in the  stone. He had rigged a sort of umbrella out of four stakes and some  cloth that
  looked like a blanket. 
  A military machine gun was set up on a tripod mount in front of  him. It must have been a machine gun the
  Arab allies had captured, for  it was of British manufacture. 
  The gunner was stationed just a bit too prominently. 
  Doc Savage studied the surrounding stone. The stuff looked as hard  as agate. There were a few cracks, and
  they ran in fairly straight  lines. This stone seemed to crack that way. 
  Doc did not approach the gunner. Instead, he withdrew, changed his  course. and scaled, with infinite
  difficulty, the side of the canyon,  and got around the gunman. 
  There was no trail. Even Doc's skill, cultivated for years, was  defeated. The men had wrapped their shoes, or
  gone barefoot, although  the latter was unlikely, considering how hot the rocks were. And  nothing much less
  than a pickax blow would mark the flinty stone. 
  General Ino's men had made a plain trail to the gunner. There had  to be a reason for that. The gunner wasn't
  the reason. He was too  prominent. 
  Doc went back, now showing himself, and fell to rising his  monocular on the route a man would logically
  follow in creeping upon  the gunner. There was only one route. 
  One particular spot in that route, under an overhanging mass of  stone, was interesting when seen from a
  distance and through the  monocular. 
  DOC hunted, found a loose stone, then began a deliberate campaign  of deceit. He made his voice
  ventriloquial in quality, sounding far  away. Then he imitated a hyena's cackle. 
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  The gunner looked only vaguely interested. The sound belonged to  these desert mountains. 
  Doc brought his hyena a bit closer. 
  The gunner scowled, shrugged, and began to fish for a cigarette. 
  Doc waited. Then he put his hyena laugh among the rocks so that the  gunner could not tell where it was,
  exactly. The man lighted his  cigarette, ignoring the noise. For a moment, he had his hands up before  his face. 
  Doc flung his rock. It hit the suspicious−looking spot which the  monocular had showed. 
  The bronze man was not surprised when there was a roar and the  whole side fell out of the canyon. The
  gunner, startled, turned loose  his machine gun. It gobbled and bullets clattered and whizzed in the  falling
  rock. 
  Doc imitated a scared hyena running away as fast as he could. 
  The gunner, after he had time to think, got up and cursed all  hyenas at the top of his voice. He had a nice fit
  on. He kicked his  machine gun over. 
  Fifteen minutes later, he had the gun folded and staggered off  under its weight. He cursed the British for
  making such heavy machine  guns. 
  Chapter 13. THE DEVIL OF THE DESERT
  GENERAL INO said, much too calmly, "Men of our kind suffer from one  disease which does not afflict
  others so seriously. In our case, it  often proves fatal. The disease is known as mistakes." 
  The sweat−soaked machine gunner stopped looking mad and registered  hurt unease. 
  "But it was a hyena!" he protested. "The cussed hound must've  walked over the sand that covered the trigger
  of the trap we had fixed  up for Doc Savage. He laughed around for a while before the explosive  went off,
  then I heard him leave in a hell of a hurry." 
  "Did you see this hyena?" Ino asked. 
  The gunner thought for a moment, and decided he had better have  seen the hyena. 
  "Sure," he lied. "I threw a rock at 'im. But who the devil would've  thought he'd run toward me instead of
  away? He jumped toward me an' hit  the trigger!" 
  "Si, Si," murmured General Ino. "I see." 
  The gunner didn't like the tone. He squirmed. 
  They stood in impressive surroundings. There were rocks around  them, boulders the size of houses, of
  skyscrapers. Some were as long as  small ocean liners. There were almost twenty armed men with General
  Ino, three out of four of them burnoosed Arabs. 
  "We heard the trap go off, and were coming," advised General Ino.  "We will take a look at the trap." 
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  "I looked around good," said the gunner, lying a little. "There  ain't nothing. I tell you, it was a hyena." 
  But they went back and looked, prying up the rocks, and scraping  out sand and fragments. 
  "It must have been a hyena, all right," General Ino admitted at  last. 
  The gunner wiped off sweat. He was relieved. 
  General Ino paced about in the sand for a time. He seemed uneasy.  His lieutenant, Proudman Shaster, was not
  with the group. 
  "There is nothing to do but wait!" General Ino snapped finally. "We  might as well go back and join the
  others." 
  As they went back, it was noticeable that the white men kept close  together, and were unusually alert. The
  black wall of rock shoved up  about them, and probably induced that feeling of inferiority, that
  speck−in−creation twinge which is one of the big kicks of the Grand  Canyon to most visitors. But these men
  were not the kind to be made  uneasy on that account. 
  A psychologist would have realized they were a bit afraid of the  Arabs, their associates. 
  General Ino's men were watching the Arabs. They would probably have  wasted their time had they watched
  their surroundings, their back  trail. 
  It would have taken sharper eyes than they possessed to discover  Doc Savage following them. 
  PROUDMAN SHASTER − two pistols in two holsters around his middle  did not even make him look
  vicious − was waiting at the foot of an  inclined stone rampway that sloped upward and passed through a
  stone  ridge. 
  This rampway, nothing but a steep path, had unquestionably been  made by human hands, and that a long time
  ago. 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan was with Shaster. "Pay Day," as Monk called him,  was handcuffed, wrist and ankle. He
  looked quietly unhappy. 
  Half a dozen whites were with Shaster, but no Arabs. 
  "This is not what I would call a really wonderful situation," he  greeted General Ino. 
  "Ach, himmel!" complained the general. "Are you going to add to my  troubles?" 
  "These Arab rascals," said Shaster, after making sure no Arabs were  close enough to hear. "Hiring them to
  help us was a good idea, as far  as it went. But this Pey−deh−eh−ghan has put a bug in their ears. I did  not
  learn until too late that he can speak some kind of an ancient  tongue that is similar to Arabic." 
  General Ino peered closely into Shaster's face. "You mean to tell  me these Arabs have learned what we are
  after?" 
  "I−I'm afraid so." 
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  General Ino said several things about Arabs of which Mohammed would  not have approved. 
  Proudman Shaster added, sorrowfully, "That is not all they know,  either. Their sheik has a portable radio
  broadcast receiver, and likes  to tune in on Cairo and Jerusalem stations. He heard a news bro~dcast  telling
  about us, and how we have switched Pey−deh−eh−ghan's mummy for  Solomon's." 
  "Damn these modern Arabs!" General Ino complained. 
  "I'm keeping Pey−deb−eh−ghan with me so that he cannot cause more  trouble," explaincd Shaster. "I caught
  him talking to William Harper  Littlejohn, too." 
  General Ino frowned reproachfully at the mummy man. "If you didn't  know where your own tomb was, I'd
  mummify you again," he said, calmly.  Then to Shaster, "Come on. We'll ask Littlejohn what this
  back−from−the−dead lad told him." 
  "Littlejohn won't tell." 
  "Then we'll shoot him," decided General Ino. "In fact, we'll  probably shoot him anyway. Oui, monsieur. It's a
  good idea." 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan did not follow them when they beckoned. When they  went back and grabbed him, he
  kicked their shins, threw sand in their  faces, and otherwise started putting up a fight. 
  But when General Ino threatened calmly to slit his throat if he  didn't come willingly, Pey−deh−eh−ghan
  quieted. Halfway to Johnny's  tent, Ino halted his group. 
  General Ino frowned as he surveyed the faces of some Arabs who were  watching their movements. They
  were forming in small groups. 
  "I think," he said, quietly, "that we are in for some trouble." 
  The Arab allies had withdrawn up the canyon. Grouped tightly, they  had been talking in low voices. About
  what, it was impossible to say.  But they glanced furtively and often at General Ino, Shaster and the  other
  whites. 
  Now a harsh voice cried out in Arabic. 
  "Kill the white men!" it yelled. 
  Then a grenade went off. It made a great roar, lifted a cloud of  sand and smoke between General Ino and the
  Arabs. 
  "Seize Pey−deh−eh−ghan and make him tell us where the tomb is!"  shrieked the Arabic voice. 
  A second grenade made a whup! noise. This one was a smoker. It  spouted a mass of sepia vapor that hid
  General Ino and the Arabs  completely from each other. 
  "Charge them!" screamed the Arabic voice. 
  General Ino whipped out an automatic pistol and let fly into the  smoke pall in the general direction of his
  burnoosed allies. Naturally,  bullets came back. More smoke bombs went whup! whup! A demolition  grenade
   RESURRECTION DAY
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  shook rocks off near−by walls. 
  Black smoke wadded the canyon, and in it a fierce fight waged. 
  GENERAL INO never got mixed up in personal violence if he could  help it; but he knew how to handle
  himself when he did. He emptied his  gun, changed position while reloading, emptied it again. Meantime, he
  felt about for a sheltering rock. 
  Proudman Shaster screeched wrathfully, and out of his clothing  hauled a machete such as jungle travelers use
  to hack a trail. He  howled again. Then he charged straight for the Arabs. His mad pants  drove spray through
  his teeth, and he was not panting from exertion. 
  His cut−off−a−head madness had seized him again. 
  He fell over something, went down. In the black smoke, it was  impossible to see. But he knew he had fallen
  over a human. He struck  furiously with his machete. 
  "Here, you fool!" barked General Ino's voice. 
  Then General Ino located Shaster's head and gave it a tap with the  automatic. Shaster sat down, sober,
  realizing he had almost killed − by  beheading − his boss. 
  "You bane too quick on trigger!" General Ino admonished. Then, when  Shaster had revived enough to hear,
  "Where's Pey−deh−eh−ghan?" 
  "Hell!" said Shaster. "I thought you had hold of him!" 
  The Arabs were shouting, and judging from the scattered shots,  running about a good deal. 
  "They're acting like Indians!" Shaster mumbled, and his eyes began  to look wild again, while his hands got
  hard on the machete's handle. 
  General Ino gave Shaster a gentle shove in the direction of the  Arabs and said, "Go get 'em!" 
  Proudman Shaster went, with that horrible look on his face, and his  machete held ready for cutting off a head. 
  General Ino heaved a sigh. Sometimes, when Shaster had his head  madness, he forgot to distinguish friend
  from foe. 
  "He'll be the death of me yet," the general muttered. He listened  to battle sounds. "And of a lot of Arabs, too." 
  But the shooting stopped suddenly. 
  "We have been tricked!" shouted the head of this squad of desert  riders. 
  "You mean you've bit off more than you can swallow!" General Ino  called cautiously. 
  The Arab cursed everything and everybody, including his own father  for raising such a stupid son. 
  "None of us started that fight!" he yelled. "It was some one else!" 
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  "Velly solly, no can believe!" snorted Ino. 
  "We did not throw the grenade," declared the Arab. "We have no  grenades!" 
  General Ino rose from behind his rock like a bird. 
  "We've been tricked!" he squawled. 
  THERE was a wind up the canyon, but it took several minutes to blow  the smoke cloud away. In the
  meantime, General Ino and the others could  do nothing but dash around and emit swear words. 
  The dispersing sepia showed two Arabs lying headless on the sand. 
  General Ino eased over alongside Proudman Shaster, "Any of these  allies of ours − question mark − know
  about that cleaver you carry  under your coat?" 
  "No," said Shaster. His mania had subsided. 
  "Better not tell 'em," advised the general. 
  "You think − " 
  Whatever he thought, the general changed his mind when he counted  the burnoosed Arabs and discovered
  three were missing. The bodies were  not behind any near−by rocks. 
  "Deceivers!" he accused. 
  It became obvious that Pey−deh−eh−ghan had also vanished. 
  "Thieves!" shrieked General Ino. "Three of you stole  Pey−deh−eh−ghan!" 
  It was a rare occasion when General Ino, the debonair master mind  who liked to play with simple phrases of
  foreign languages, shrieked. 
  It looked for a moment as if the fight was ready to break out  again. But the burnoosed brown villains kept
  shaking their heads and  swearing by the beard, even the whole head, of Allah that there had  been no plot of
  their knowledge. 
  Then they all pitched in and hunted Pey−deh−eh−ghan and the three  missing Bedouins. They found tracks.
  Looking these over, they decided  the three children of the desert had made off with the mummy man. They
  tried to follow the tracks. They managed all of a hundred yards, before  they sat down on the sand, baffled,
  and tried to outmatch profanity. 
  General Ino, head in hands, murmured, "Never in my life was I  through a fight in which I really knew less
  about what happened." 
  PROUDMAN SHASTER had been standing to one side, wearing the  attitude of a man in deep thought. The
  general had presumed Shaster was  thinking about what would happen to him if the Arabs learned he was the
  man who had cut off the heads of their two fellows. The pair had been  the only casualties in the fight. The
  fact that the fight had all been  a mistake might not make the Bedoins see it right. 
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  68
  
  But Shaster now came over. 
  "A horrible suspicion has occurred to me!" he whispered in a  horrified voice. "Could that all have been the
  work of Doc Savage!" 
  General Ino nearly fell over flat on the sand. He gurgled, "You  think − " 
  "Only a guess. Those smoke bombs. The grenades. These Arabs seem  genuinely puzzled." 
  General Ino was a man too startled to speak. 
  Came a rattling of hoofbeats down the canyon, then many voices  raised in song. One chorus was sung in
  English, and the next by the  Arabs. 
  "Bronzey marched to Arabia,  Oh, aye, oh!  Bronzey marched to  Arabia,  Poor Bronze y!" 
  The Arabs filled in with about the same thing in their own  language. Then the whites: 
  "Arabia all a−hell,  Oh, aye, oh!  Off a rock he fell,  Poor  Bronzey!" 
  General Ino did everything but have a fit in front of them. "This  is a fine time to make up doggerel!" he
  shrieked. Then they told him  Doc Savage was dead. They had seen the bronze man's body where it had  fallen
  down the cliff. They had shot many bullets into it, and red  blood had run. 
  General Ino looked much more cheerful. Proudman Shaster said it was  really wonderful. 
  "Now we can catch your three friends and Pey−deh−eh−ghan," General  Ino told the Bedouins. 
  They set out to do that. But first the Arabs got off their horses,  got down with their foreheads on the sand, and
  asked Allah to be with  them, at least this once. General Ino decided they were really in  earnest about it. 
  Chapter 14. CROOKED TWO
  THE three missing Arabs lay, side by side, in the shade under a  rock shelf. Not one of the three could move
  his legs or his left arm.  Each could move his right arm almost as well as usual. None of them  could move
  their throat muscles, nor would their vocal cords function,  so they could not make a sound. 
  Doc Savage carefully put away the tiny hypo needle which he had  used to inject the local anaesthetic which
  had paralyzed the certain  parts of the prisoners. He had used the local in concentrated form, and  it would be a
  day at least before the prisoners could do any moving  around or yelling. 
  It would have been simpler to have made them entirely unconscious  and left them hidden here, for this spot
  was one that the closest  search was not likely to find. But there were the jackals and other  roving desert
  beasts which would eat a helpless man. 
  Doc had left each prisoner his knife. They could defend themselves  with the blades. 
  The three Bedouins stared at the bronze giant, goggle−eyed. They  had been amazed since the bronze giant
  had seized them and whisked them  away, along with Pey−deh−ehghan, during the fight which, they realized
  with astonishment, Doc had started. 
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  Chapter 14. CROOKED TWO
  69
  
  At times, this amazing man who looked so like solid metal had  carried all three of them and the mummy man
  simultaneously, and that  without apparent great effort, and at a pace that not many unburdened  men could
  match. 
  DOC SAVAGE spoke in the ancient tongue of Pey−deh−eh−ghan. 
  "We had best take ourselves from this spot," he said. 
  He did not manage the dead language too well, but it was far better  than anything Pey−deh−eh−ghan had
  been hearing. 
  Pay Day, as Monk had dubbed him, showed even yellow teeth in a  tight smile. He was not an unhandsome
  rascal. 
  "Tell me," he requested abruptly. "Are you a mortal?" Doc had to  puzzle over the words briefly before be got
  them. 
  "I am," he admitted. 
  Pay Day said something too rapidly to be understood, but it was  evidently something to the effect that he had
  seen some miracles which  had led him to doubt the bronze giant's earthly qualities. 
  "Tell me," Pay Day requested more slowly. "Why have you seized me?" 
  "You know the loeation of a treasure," Doc said. 
  Pay Day had been the prize pirate Pharaoh of his day. This was  something he understood. 
  "It is my treasure," he reminded. 
  "But you are my captive," Dcc countered. "You cannot escape, and  you might have some unpleasant things
  done to you." 
  Pay Day ran his eyes over some of Doc's remarkable muscles. 
  "It may be," he admitted, reluctantly. "It is also true that I did  not trust those other men from whom you took
  me." 
  Doc said, "Children do not trust strangers. And it is only fools  who grow up." 
  Pay Day smiled again, a bit more freely. "You wish to become my  partner?" 
  "Since when have bee hunters taken to sharing the honey with the  bees?" Doc countered. 
  Pay Day understood this kind of talk. 
  "A wolf with two eyes may watch another wolf, but not forty  wolves," be said. 
  "Exactly. And two men can watch each other." 
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  Pay Day had something else on his mind. "Those men who had me  prisoner feared you greatly. They said you
  were a very great devil." 
  "A matter of opinion," Doc suggested. 
  "We could share halves," offered Pay Day. "There is enough for  many, more for two." 
  Doc shrugged, said, "Let us go." 
  Pay Day grinned. Evidently he had taken General Ino's statement  that Doc was a very great devil literally,
  and was willing to consider  a great devil as a partner. 
  DOC SAVAGE and Pay Day moved cautiously, that they might not be  seen. 
  Pay Day said, "They have five of your men who are going to lose  their heads." 
  Doc countered, "Does a fly help other flies which have gotten into  the web of the spider?" 
  Pay Day approved of that. He cackled once, a queer sound of mirth,  which would have moved a listener to
  reflect that laughs must have  changed a lot in the last few thousand years. 
  "They tortured me," Pay Day said after a bit. "It is not a wise man  who permits his right hand to be cut off
  when the golden shekel is in  his left. I gave them a general idea of where the tomb lies." 
  Dcc Savage stopped. He let Pay Day see a critical and somewhat  contemptuous frown on his features. 
  "Jackals always howl loudly in a trap!" he snapped. 
  Pay Day evidently felt he had to resent that. He did it by glaring.  They imitated two hostile dogs for a while. 
  "But it is a wise jackal who howls as if he were dying, then bites  when he has the chance," the bronze man
  conceded finally. 
  That satisfied Pay Day's dignity, it appeared. "Wisdom can  recognize wisdom." 
  "These men must be delayed," Doc said. 
  "They are many." 
  Doc nodded, then said, meaningly, "But many a man has drunk bad  water and thought it tasted good." 
  Pay Day quit beating around the bush. "Poison?" 
  "The friend of the worms which feed on the bodies of men," Doc  said. 
  "You have poison?" 
  "He is a fool who does not travel prepared." 
  Pay Day gobbled out his usual laugh. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 14. CROOKED TWO
  71
  
  "I will show you where our enemies are encamped," he said. 
  That was what Doc had been angling for. He wanted to rescue his  five aids, if possible. Had he come out with
  that, Pay Day would  probably have mentioned "too many cooks spoiling a soup," or the  equivalent of his day,
  and refused. But guile and a little talk had led  him on. 
  Doc had not exactly lied. 
  They worked rapidly through the mountains. 
  MONK lay on his back and complained, "This is what I call being a  great help to Doc!" 
  He was tied. So were the other four. Most securely. 
  Ham snarled, "You hairy gossoon! It was you who bought that basket  of dates!" 
  "Don't mention dates to me!" Monk yelled. 
  "Dates!" Ham said. "Dates! Dates! Dates! Dates − " 
  A sun helmet and a face came into the tent. It was the kind of a  face that would have frightened its owner's
  mother to death. 
  "Bullets!" snarled the face. "Bullets! Bullets! A load of 'em if  you don't quit talking all the time!" 
  "The magpies raised 'em," big−fisted Renny offered, sourly. 
  "Bullets for you, too!" said the face, and withdrew. 
  "Who's that guy?" Monk wanted to know − in a whisper. 
  "A renegade white was running with the Arabs," Long Tom advised. "I  heard enough to know it was he who
  did the dickering that got the Arabs  lined up with General Ino." 
  "Name's Sandy," gaunt Johnny supplied. 
  Because they rather suspected the man "Sandy" meant what he had  said about the bullets, they all fell silent.
  It was very hot. The tent  seemed like white flame over them. Their captors had neglected to put a  fly over the
  tent, which would have helped with the heat. 
  Hours passed. Their eyes filled with salty perspiration, and when  they turned over, the hot sand stifled them.
  Too, certain small,  crawling things had come out of the sand, taken sample bites, then gone  back to bring
  millions of their brothers. 
  "For two cents," Monk groaned, "I'd start yelling and let that guy  Sandy shoot me!" 
  "They robbed me," Ham snapped, "or I'd pay your bill!" 
  Finally, there came a great deal of noise of horses and men and  camels arriving. There was some shouting in
  Arabic. 
   RESURRECTION DAY
  Chapter 14. CROOKED TWO
  72
  
  "General Ino and all the rest of them are back," Johnny decided.  "Now, maybe we'll get some relief." 
  Johnny had not used a long word for hours. And it was not exactly  relief they were going to be offered. 
  General Ino whipped the tent flap open. 
  "Take them out," he directed. "Strip them. Remove all their  clothing." 
  "Hey!" Monk yelled. "What's the idea of that?" 
  "So you can run faster," General Ino told him. 
  "In that case, you'd better be shucking your duds!" Monk glowered. 
  General Ino laughed. "Braggadocio is the resort of cowards, not of  brave men." 
  Ham told Monk, "I always told you!" 
  Robed Bedoums entered the tent, and disrobed the captives simply  and effectively by ripping off the
  garments with their knives. They  were not too careful and inflicted small cuts. 
  Outside, swarthy men on camels and horses were lined tip. Rifles  were slung over backs and pistols were
  holstered, but each man held a  knife or sword, whatever cutting weapon he carried. 
  BIG−FISTED Renny peered about and was not encouraged by the  expressions he saw. 
  "Holy cow!" he boomed. "Just what's the idea?" 
  "You are going to be turned loose," said General Ino. 
  "Turned loose?" 
  "And given a chance to outrun the horses," murmured the general.  "Haven't you ever heard the old game of
  'hound and hare,' the good  Arabian desert warrior's version?" 
  Renny's long face became set. "You mean they're going to ride us  down and use those knives and swords?" 
  "A most accurate guess." 
  Renny yelled, "Nothing doing!" 
  "Suit yourself. You'll probably change your mind after the first  sword slash and run. They usually do, my
  sheet−clad friends here tell  me." 
  The prisoners were carried a short distance from the camp. They  were still tied wrist and ankle, but now
  knives severed their wrists.  Their ankles were left tied while the horses and camels were lined up.  Apparently
  this had to be done just so. 
  Long Tom, his face perceptibly paler than usual, muttered, "These  fellows can't be human!" 
  "They've got the shape only," Monk agreed, dryly. 
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  73
  
  Ham suggested, "Which is more than you can say." 
  It was almost grisly, this wisecracking between the two, the  exchanging of insults. But it had become a habit,
  and those who knew  them often swore they would rise out of their coffins, just before they  were buried, to
  have a final word about how little each thought of the  other. 
  An Arab came running with Ham's pet, Chemistry. 
  "The animal is to be given his chance with you," advised General  Ino. "He has bitten every one who came
  near him." 
  Ham grated, "The world has something to be proud of in you lads!" 
  Everything seemed to be about ready. 
  General Ino drew his pistol and explained, "To make everything  right, I'll fire a starting gun!" 
  He raised his gun. 
  On a rocky peak two hundred yards away, a man screamed. He was a  tall man with a swarthy face, and even
  at that distance, he was so  distinctive that he could not be mistaken. 
  It was Pey−eh−eh−ghan! 
  GENERAL INO'S gun did not explode on that occasion. But the  general's lungs did. 
  "Get him!" he howled. "Quick!" 
  In his excitement, be used English, which not many of the Bedoums  understood. They hardly needed to
  understand, for they were already  riding madly for the exotic mummy man on the rocky spire. 
  The charge seemed to scare Pey−deh−eh−ghan. He whirled and  vanished. 
  "Quick!" roared General Ino. "You can trail him!" All the horses  and all the camels were in the pursuit. The
  men who were afoot charged  also. 
  "Here!" General Ino called some in Arabic. "Help me!" They did, and  tied the prisoners again. Then
  everybody rushed off after the mummy  man. Within three minutes, not a man was left around the tents.
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan was the prize, the key to the treasure vaults of a  looting Pharaoh. They all wanted him. 
  Doc Savage appeared in the camp. He seemed to rise from the sand.  Obviously, he had crept close ahead of
  time. And be had his knife ready  for the ropes binding the prisoners. 
  "Run!" he directed, cutting the cord that bound the prisoners. 
  "But our clothes!" Monk grated. "And them scuts may have left some  extra guns − " 
  "Run!" Doc said. 
  They ran. Heads down, sand so hot on their feet that they had to  grimace all the time. But they got out of the
  camp and into the black  rock canyons and spires without a shot or a shout to show they bad been  observed. 
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  74
  
  "From now on, I believe in miracles!" big−fisted Renny rumbled,  softly. 
  "It'll be a miracle if this sand don't cook my feet!" Ham  complained. 
  "You can't expect to be manly goin' round cased up in them clothes  like you wear," Monk assured him. 
  But they did not talk much, for this was literally a time when they  might easily talk themselves to death. Doc
  Savage seemed to have picked  out the course for their flight. It soon led onto solid rock, where  they would
  leave no footprints. 
  The bronze man tore off parts of his clothing and gave the  fragments to them, to use in wiping off the sweat
  so the leakage would  not leave betraying wet blotches on the sand. 
  Every one but Doc was startled when Pey−deh−eh−ghan appeared  unexpectedly before them. 
  "GOOD old Pay Day!" Monk chortled. "You sure saved our skins!" 
  Pay Day was not wearing the expression of a man who had done a good  deed. He looked mad. He cackled at
  Doc Savage, waving his arms. 
  Doc rattled back. Pay Day broke in. They barked at each other. 
  "I'll be superamalgamated!" gasped Johnny, who was archaeologist  and linguist enough to understand much
  of the ancient tongue.  "Pey−deh−eh−ghan is enraged because Doc rescued us!" 
  "Huh?" Monk blinked. 
  "Pey−deh−eh−ghan says Doc gave him to understand that the men were  to be decoyed out of the camp so
  Doc could poison their drinking  water," elaborated Johnny. "But Doc rescued us. Pay Day − I mean
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan − says Doc double−crossed him!" 
  Monk closed one eye and looked balefully at Pay Day with the other  orb. "You mean this
  something−out−of−a−sarcophagus wants us dead?" 
  "A meticulous avouchment," said Johnny, who was relieved enough to  slide back toward big words. 
  "I'm gonna kick his slats in!" Monk declared. 
  Monk delayed his rib damaging to watch Doc and Pay Day argue  heatedly. The word exchange was furious. 
  "First time I ever saw Doc bandy a lot of words with anybody," Long  Tom grunted. 
  "This Pey−deh−eh−ghan is some thousands of years old," Johnny  reminded with dignity. "He should be
  treated with consideration." 
  Monk worked the toes of his kicking foot. "I've got the  consideration treatment right down here." 
  But the argument ended with a shrug of resignation from Pay Day. 
  Doc Savage said, "He finally said everything was all right,  providing you fellows did not get any of his share
  of the tomb's  contents. But he will bear watching from now on. As a matter of fact,  he already bore watching.
   RESURRECTION DAY
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  He is as much a rascal, perhaps, as General  Ino and the others." 
  They got under way, it being desirable to put as much ground  between their enemies and themselves as
  possible. 
  As they plodded, Renny asked Doc Savage, "How did Pay Day get away  from the Arabs and Ino so slick?" 
  "We fixed that up in advance," Doc explained. "Pay Day made a plain  trail of a man running through the sand
  before he ever showed himself.  Then, after General Ino's crowd saw him, he simply ducked away, walked
  over stone, and joined us. General Ino and the others saw the false  trail, of course, and presumed it was a
  fresh one." 
  Renny reminded, "They're bound to discover their mistake." 
  "It will soon be dark," Doc pointed out. 
  Chapter 15. TOMB TRAP
  IT got more than dark. It got as black as it had the night before,  and there were the same clouds, the same
  gobbling of thunder and  snapping of lightning bolts. 
  "It rarely rains two nights in a row in this region," confided  gaunt Johnny, who as a geologist knew a bit
  about the world's surface.  "This, however, is the rainy season." 
  "So that's it!" Monk snorted. "The rainy season! Say, last night,  we were standing on a hill, right on the top,
  and the water got neck  deep before it could run off!" 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan was having a bit of difficulty with his direction.  He knew nothing about a compass. They
  gave up trying to explain it to  him. Neither did the aerial photographs which Doc had taken mean  anything to
  him. 
  Johnny went over the photographs with great interest. He seemed  disappointed. He began: 
  "From my prolegomenon it is indubitable that there is no  manifestation of any photographical − " 
  "Listen!" groaned Monk. "There's one guy here I can't understand −  Pay Day. Why not let 'im have the field
  to himself?" 
  Johnny looked pained, said, "What I started to say was that I can  see no sign of any tomb in these pictures." 
  That this whole bloody affair might have been over nothing was not  a cheerful thought. None of them
  commented. 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan finally got disgusted over his own inability to  tell where he wanted to go. He put on a
  demonstration, throwing his hat  down, leaping upon it and generally acting up. 
  "An angry child breaks his toys," Doc suggested, dryly, in the  mummy man's tongue. 
  "And a lake which has no outlet soon becomes stagnant," countered  the one−time Pharaoh. 
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  76
  
  In his day he must have been something of a repartee artist. 
  Five minutes later, Pey−deh−eh−ghan peered at a tall, oddly shaped  rock ridge, pointed, and made pleased
  clucking noises. 
  "Sounds like he'd laid an egg," Monk said. "What's eatin' him?" 
  "He says that is the Ridge of the Galloping Lions," Doc translated.  "A landmark he recognizes." 
  Monk squinted at the contours of the ridge. "Yeah, it has got a  distinctive shape. But as for galloping lions, it
  could be almost  anything running, walking or − " 
  "Riding a bicycle," said Ham. "You talk too much." 
  Pey−deh−e−ghan headed for the ridge and they had to trot to keep  up. The mummy man found a narrow
  canyon and trotted into it. Light was  immediately shut off by half, making fast walking dangerous. 
  "Ouch!" Renny complained, falling over a rock. 
  "We will chance a flashlight beam now and then," Doc decided. 
  Brief dribbles of light showed the sides of the canyon like  corridor walls. It was not a black color, but
  reddish. And it was  perforated everywhere with perfectly square holes about large enough  for a man to walk
  through. 
  Big−fisted Renny stopped. 
  "Holy cow!" he rumbled. "For a minute, I thought we were in a  street, and them holes were windows in the
  walls of buildings!" 
  Doc went over and splashed light into an opening. They alt saw a  room in the solid rock, about the size of a
  railway box car. Along the  walls were rock shelves about seven feet long. 
  Three other stone rooms which they looked into were exactly the  same. 
  Bony Johnny peered upward and said, "The canyon walls overhang so  as to keep off tbe rain and sun. That
  explains why these things are so  well preserved, because this rock is not very hard." 
  "If you can keep on using little words, you might tell me what  we've been lookin' at," Monk told him. 
  "Barracks," Johnny replied. "No doubt excavated for the slaves who  built the tomb." 
  MONK scratched the bristles atop his head and said, "If they went  to that trouble, buildin' this tomb must
  have taken some time. Maybe a  year." 
  Johnny tried his ancient Egyptian on Pey−deh−eh−ghan. He got an  answer. 
  "It took slaves, one and one third anghs in number, about nine  years to construct the tomb," Johnny
  explained, translating. 
  "What's an angh?" 
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  77
  
  "About ten thousand." 
  "Whew! Thirteen thousand slaves nine years!" 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan was anxious to go on, and had walked off from them.  They ran ahead and caught him. 
  From time to time, as he walked along, the mummy man looked at  them. He seemed to have something on
  his mind. But he kept it to  himself. 
  "Ten − I mean thirteen − thousand slaves for nine years," Monk  ruminated as he waddled along in the rear.
  "Listen, does anybody want  to bet me Pay Day's treasury, or whatever he called his private loot  pile, is
  empty?" 
  "I wish," Johnny said, caustically, "that you would stop calling  this man Pay Day. He was a Pharaoh, a great
  ruler in his day, a man  worthy of respect. Call him by his name, Pey−deh−eh−ghan." 
  "All right," Monk said. "Want to bet?" 
  "Why? What makes you think the wealth is gone?" 
  "With thirteen thousand slaves, and there must've been some guards,  knowing where this place was," Monk
  said. "I bet somebody came back and  cleaned it out." 
  Johnny thought that over and began to look worried. Johnny rarely  got excited over money or treasure, being
  like most genuine scholars.  But this was more than a treasure. It might be one of the  archaeological finds of
  the century. 
  "I think I shall ask Pey−deh−eh−ghan about that," he said, and did. 
  He came back looking as if he had just found a tarantula in his  vest pocket. 
  He walked along without offering a word of explanation about what  he had learned. 
  "Well?" Monk prompted. "Cat got your tongue?" 
  "Pey−eh−eh−ghan said all of the slaves were executed when their  work was done, so that the location would
  remain a secret," Johnny  said, reluctantly. 
  "Jehoshaphat!" exclaimed Monk. "We're hobnobbing with one of the  champion murderers of history!" 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan stopped abruptly. 
  "He has reached the mouth of the tomb," Doc called. 
  THE mummy man had stopped beside a block of stone nearly fifty feet  wide and about the same in height, or
  so it looked when they threw  their flashlight beams upward. Monk walked around the block. 
  "It's as square as Ham's head," he said, sarcastically. 
  He poked the stone thoughtfully with his finger nails. Then he felt  around with his feet, found a small rock
  and tapped the stone cube. The  rock was so hard it rang almost like steel. 
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  78
  
  "Sounds like Monk's brain overworking itself," Ham said, bitingly. 
  "What kind of rock is this?" Monk asked, paying no attention to the  dapper lawyer. 
  Johnny said, "A kind used in a number of ancient tombs. It was  brought from great distances. Some
  archaeologists believe the  particular rock had a religious significance, while others claim it was  merely used
  because of its hardness." 
  Probably searching for some sign of a door, Doc passed the  flashlight beam along the stone cube. The light
  passed over Monk, who,  like the others, did not have a stitch of clothes. 
  Ham burst out laughing. "You're sure a vision, Monk!" 
  Before Monk thought up a reply, Pey−deh−eh−ghan spoke. The mummy  man sounded determined. Doc
  listened intently. 
  "He says the tomb has not been touched," Doc Savage translated for  the others. "And he wants to know just
  where we stand on the dividing." 
  "Why, everything will be sold to museums, of course!" Johnny said.  "Proceeds of sale to the museums will
  go to charity, just as we usually  do." 
  Doc said quietly, "It will hardly do to tell him that." 
  "Let me bust 'im one," Monk suggested. "I'll knock the argument out  of 'im!" 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan spoke again. His tone told the listeners that he  had a proposition. 
  "He says," Doc translated, "that half is his and half mine. and if  the rest of you get any split, it will be out of
  my share." 
  "Humor him," Ham suggested. "After we get our hands on the stuff,  we can let him keep as little as we want." 
  "Typical lawyer honesty in that suggestion!" Monk jeered. 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan solved the dilemma by giving up. He waved his arms,  shrugged, turned and shoved
  against the side of the big stone block. 
  "A secret door!" Monk exploded. 
  THEY crowded around the mummy man. When he signaled that they  should help him shove, they did so.
  Nothing, as far as they could see,  happened. There was no secret door. 
  But Pey−deh−eh−ghan seemed satisfied. 
  He walked away from the block purposefully. 
  "I don't savvy this," Monk complained. 
  The mummy man covered fully a hundred yards, then climbed a sloping  path and entered one of the stone
  barracks rooms. He began stamping  upon the floor of this. 
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  A big slab of stone tilted up a few inches. 
  They grasped the panel of rock, finished lifting it, and revealed a  shaftway just about as steep as a man could
  walk down without sliding. 
  Doc could use his flashlight in here without danger of being seen.  Pey−deh−eh−ghan grinned in the glow and
  said something. 
  "He says the big block is just a blind, although shoving on a  certain part of it very hard works a long series of
  levers that unlock  this slab," Johnny explained. 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan walked into the aperture. Doc and the others  followed, stringing out in single file. The
  passage had a width of four  feet, twice that height. It sloped enough to keep them from wanting to  walk fast. 
  The mummy man stopped and gave a rock wedge a shove. This caused a  rumble, and the rock slab behind
  them closed. 
  "I was wonderin' about that," Monk said. "If General Ino came and  found that open, he could walk right in." 
  The tunnel sloped downward interminably at the same angle. It had  no branches, and there was a monotonous
  sameness about the walls. When  it finally turned sharply, they were all relieved. 
  The first of the carvings appeared in the tunnel. It was cut into  the wail, was no more than a foot high, and
  depicted a boy and an  animal. The animal resembled a sheep more than anything else. 
  The next carving was bigger. The boy looked older, and there were  more sheep. 
  The art work was excellent for its period. 
  In the next, the boy was a young man and he had donkeys and sheep. 
  "Let me have the flashlight!" bony Johnny exclaimed, eagerly. "I  would like to study those a moment. They
  are remarkable samples." 
  Doc gave him the flashlight. It was extremely dark in the passage. 
  The carvings grew in size, and had the proportions of life. The  young man in them had put on arms. In the
  next one, he had a soldier or  two behind him. The numbers of the soldiers increased and became a  legion. 
  The boy, now a man, did not have sheep any more. He had cities,  pyramids, tombs, ships, soldiers and
  women. 
  JOHNNY asked Pey−deh−eh−ghan something, got an answer, and  translated it. 
  "These carvings depict the rise of Pey−deh−eh−ghan from a  herdsman's son," he explained. 
  The sculptored likeness of Pey−deh−eh−ghan got more huge. His  great, muscled arms encircled the passage
  conipletely. Then he grew so  huge − in stone − that there was room for nothing but his head. 
  Finally, the passage ran up against the face alone, and went  through the huge mouth. It was an effective
  depiction of a fellow who  had ideas about gobbling the world. 
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  "Human nature ain't changed much," Monk muttered. 
  They had to bend over to get through the mouth. 
  Johnny, with the flashlight was treading Pey−deh−eh−ghan's heels,  as excited as a brood hen in a hawk raid.
  The others followed and were  in almost complete darkness. 
  There were hundreds of statutes of men and women kneeling and  facing a door at the other end of the great
  room. The figures were life  size, well done, and made a creepy spectacle. 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan said something. 
  "He says they are the nobles of his empire praying for him in the  beyond," Johnny translated. "They are
  praying that when he becomes King  of Heaven, he will not be too rough on the gods whom he took the job
  away from." 
  Monk snorted, "Wasn't he an optimist, though!" 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan walked across the room. Johnny kept at his beels,  lighting the way with the flashlight. 
  The mummy man was almost in the door when he whirled suddenly and  pointed at the side of the room.
  Johnny looked in that direction.  Pey−deh−eh−ghan kicked him in the stomach. 
  Chapter 16. THB SLY MUMMY MAN
  PEY−DEH−EH−GHAN leaped backward through the door. Instantly, when  his weight hit, sliding rock
  rasped and thumped. The mummy man cackled  his shrill laughter. It had a grisly quality. 
  He felt carefully and assured himself that the door was closed by a  huge panel of stone. 
  The mummy man knew his surroundings. He had no trouble without  light. He worked to the left, crowded
  into a narrow shaft that had  footholds cut into the rock. He climbed. 
  A niche at the top held a number of weapons. He seized these, and  tested them. Time had made the spears
  useless. The heads came off the  shafts when he tried them. But a huge sword, all of bronze, satisfied  him. 
  He carried it and crept along a passage until he found a rock in  the floor which was fitted with handholds and
  held down by clever stone  wedges. He loosened the wedges, grasped the handholds, and lifted the  stone. 
  He called to Doc Savage in his native tongue. 
  "I tried to knock your follower away from the trapdoor before he  accidentally tripped it," the mummy man
  lied. "If you will come under  this hole, it may be that I can lower my arm and you can jump and grab  it." 
  Then Pey−deh−eh−ghan got his bronze sword ready for the man of  bronze. 
  Then Doc's voice − it was low and held a ventriloquial quality so  that it was impossible to tell where the
  bronze man was − spoke. 
  "Keep away from the hole," Doc said. "It is probably another  trick." 
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  Monk shouted, "Doc! The way we came in is closed!" 
  Doc did not answer. 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan remained with the sword poised until his optimism  gave out. Then he replaced the stone
  slab, made sure the wedges were  fast, and crawled on, and examined the other door. 
  The centuries had not interfered with the efficiency of that end of  the trap. It could be opened from this side,
  but not from within, and  it was as thick as Pey−deh−eh−ghan was tall. 
  The mummy man sat down to rest and to think. He was not the man he  had once been, and the night had been
  brisk. 
  Finally, he arose and left the underground tunnels. 
  It was raining outside. Thunder and lightning made the black  mountains as noisy as a battlefield. 
  Considering the amount of water that was falling, remarkably little  was running along the floor of the canyon.
  The mummy man waded in, and  it came barely to his ankles. 
  He chuckled to himself, and once he glanced upward, at the mountain  over the tomb tunnels, in a cunous
  way. He went on. The rain would wipe  out tracks that might show that the mummy man had brought Doc
  Savage  and his aids here. 
  The one−time Pharaoh headed for General Ino's camp. 
  PROUDMAN SHASTER, the barrister, had been with General Ino a long  time, and he had learned that when
  the general was calm when he should  reasonably be tearing his hair, it was a good time for keeping an eye
  open. The general seemed to work backward. He was maddest when he  looked the calmest, and he was calm
  now. 
  The Arabs did not know their new chief. They came in sheepishly,  reported no trace of Doc Savage's men or
  Peydeh−eh−ghan, and went off  smiling when the general did not explode. 
  General Ino looked at Proudman Shaster and said, "Really, I am so  mad I could poison everybody here,
  including myself!" 
  Shaster knotted his skinny hands together and looked miserable. He  did not look as if anything would ever be
  "really wonderful again." 
  The storm gobbled and whooped in the distance. Every one was  soaked, and it was chilly. 
  General Ino sat back and hummed. He might have been happy. He  hummed a verse about a happy maiden in
  the tulips, and repeated it in  half a dozen languages. Finally, be hummed it in the ancient Fgyptian  which
  Pey−deb−ell−ghan spoke. 
  General Ino had gone to trouble to learn the language, and,  although he had not mastered it, he had been able
  to make the mummy man  understand, and to comprehend what the former Pharaoh said. The general  had a
  mind which could concentrate and learn almost anything in a short  time. When Pey−deh−eh−ghan walked out
  of the desert night, a burnoosed  member of the Arabian allies − it was the white man named Sandy −  yelled
  and nearly shot the mummy man. 
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  Pey−deh−eh−ghan gave them all a big, happy smile, then did some  lying. He told them that it was Doc
  Savage in a disguise who had stood  on the hill and yelled, not himself. He said that he had been carried  off
  unwillingly by Doc Savage. 
  General Ino showed that he was shocked to learn Doc Savage was  alive. 
  The mummy man finished by saying he had escaped and come back to  them, and that if they would protect
  him from Doc Savage, he would show  them the tomb. 
  Everybody then set off for the tomb in great good humor. 
  UPON reaching the canyon of the barracks caves, Pey−deh−eh−ghan  walked to the big block of stone, as he
  had done with Doc Savage. It  was almost dawn. The mummy man pressed against the stone key, after  which
  they went to the barracks chamber, and all filed into the sloping  stone passage. 
  They did not have any flashlights, and it was very dark. 
  "Give me some of the little sticks which when rubbed become hot and  burn," requested Pey−deh−eh−ghan. 
  General Ino willingly passed over a small box of matches. The mummy  man tried them out. 
  "Come," he said in his tongue. 
  He took them to the room of the kneeling stone statues. He was well  ahead, and halfway across the room,
  when he stopped the others. 
  "There is a trap here for thieves," he said. "I shall go ahead and  stop it from operating. You others remain
  here for a moment." 
  He was almost at the other end of the room when General Ino  decided, "I'll go with you!" 
  General Ino was too late. Pey−deh−eh−ghan gave a leap, reached a  narrow door the others had not seen,
  lunged through it, jerked out  stone wedges, and a rock slab closed the opening noisily. 
  Then the mummy man raced down a passage and got the exit − the  stone mouth − shut also. 
  A few minutes later, he was at a small opening which gave into the  room where the prisoners were. General
  Ino and the rest were doing so  much shouting that the mummy man had to squawi several times before  they
  stopped and listened to him. 
  Then somebody shot at the spot from which Pey−deb−eb ghan's voice  came. The bullet missed. The mummy
  man showed no concern; but that was  ignorance, not bravery. He did not yet understand what a gun was or
  how  a bullet could kill. 
  "Listen to me," he requested. 
  "We are listening," General Ino told him, having much trouble with  the ancient words. 
  "It is a foolish fox who thinks he alone is sly," said  Pey−deh−eh−ghan. 
  General Ino snarled, "Are you goin' to gloat or say something?" 
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  "Say something," the pirate Pharaoh said, and proceeded to do so. 
  He told them that Doc Savage and his aids were imprisoned in the  next room, and that he was going to
  operate a device that would open  the door between the rooms. 
  They could fight it out. 
  GENERAL INO yelled frantic orders. His men still had their weapons.  Guns were cocked in the darkness. 
  When they heard the grinding of the stone slab opening, they all  charged forward. Only four got through the
  narrow hole at once. General  Ino and Shaster were prudently not among the four. 
  The four fired a volley of shots and nearly deafened themselves.  There was no answer, no sound to show that
  they had hit any one, or  that any one was going to attack them. They began prowling in search of  the enemy,
  doing it as quietly as possible. 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan heard the silence and knew something was wrong. He  scuttled to the hole in the ceiling of
  the room in which he had trapped  Doc Savage's party. It was too dark to see much, and his ears told him
  disgustingly little. 
  He got out his matches, tore off a sleeve of his burnoose, and set  it afire. When it blazed, he dropped it
  through the hole, then glanced  down cautiously. 
  Doc Savage and his aids were not in the trap. 
  Directly behind Pey−deh−eh−ghan, Monk's small boylike voice said,  gleefully, "Brothers, have I been
  waiting for this moment!" 
  Then Monk got hold of the mummy man's throat. 
  PEY−DEH−EH−GHAN had lived in an age when a fight was a fight and  they did not stand off and shoot
  bullets at each other. He reached up,  got Monk's by−no−means−small ears and did his best to pull them off. 
  Monk squawled and hit the mummy man over a kidney. Pey−deh−eh−ghan  bit off a mouthful of Monk's left
  arm. They fell to hitting each other  so fast that they both lost count. 
  Ham, Johnny and Renny grabbed Monk and hauled him off while Doc  Savage held the mummy man. 
  Ham yelled angrily, "Monk was only to grab him!" 
  Monk snarled, "I hadda defend myself!" 
  Pey−eh−eh−ghan tried numerous rough−and−tumble tricks, trying to  escape from Doc, and had no luck. He
  gave up. He panted noisily in the  darkness, until he had regained his breath. 
  General Ino's crowd had heard the melee and the words. They howled  like wolves and shot through the
  ceiling hole. General Ino swore in  several languages. 
  "That's sure music," big−fisted Renny rumbled, listening to the  exasperated profanity. 
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  Pey−deh−eh−ghan growled curiously, "You must indeed be men of magic  that you can pass through stone
  walls." 
  Johnny understood that, and asked the others, "Shall we tell him  that Doc was suspicious when we came in
  here, and after he gave me the  flashlight, he dropped way back, so that he was not even in the room  when we
  were trapped?" 
  Long Tom snapped, "Sure, tell him! It'll puncture some of his  conceit! Tell him how Doc used ventriloquism
  to make him think he was  in the room, when as a matter of fact. Doc was right beside Pay Day.  Tell him Doc
  got us out, and that we all were right on his trail and  watching him when he went to get General Ino's mob
  and trapped them,  too." 
  "My suggestion is that if he thinks we are magicians, let him go on  thinking it," Doc put in quietly. 
  They stood there, not sure what they would do next. 
  Monk, examining his bitten arm, grumbled, "I hope that ex−mummy  ain't poison!" 
  "He fanged you?" Ham asked, anxiously. 
  Monk said, "I guess I'll live." 
  "I was worried about Pay Day!" Ham said. 
  General Ino and his men stopped swearing and shooting. The general  began whispering, but they could not
  hear what he was saying. 
  "They're hatchin' something," Renny decided. 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan squirmed. Doc had not turned him loose again. 
  "We will see how this fellow bluffs," Doc said. 
  The bronze man changed his grip to the mummy man's throat. He  squeezed enough to give the fellow an idea
  of what dying by that method  would be like. 
  "We have no further use for you," he told Pey−deh−ebghan. "No wise  man burdens himself with ashes of the
  firewood he has already burned." 
  The mummy man gobbled air into his lungs. He was rascal enough  himself to think Doc meant it. 
  "Wait!" he exclaimed in his strange, hard−to−understand tongue. "It  is very hard to get into the tomb. It will
  take you much time. I will  show you, in exchange for my life." 
  Doc waited long enough for it to seem he was considering the offer. 
  "Very well," he agreed. 
  They made a compact group around the mummy man as he moved forward.  Renny carried Doc's flashlight. 
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  THE parts of the tomb which they had already seen had not been  especially impressive, and they had
  suspected all along that this was  an outer passage, containing a few traps to discourage vandals. 
  The mummy man came to an arched opening cut in the solid stone. The  aperture was surrounded by chiseled
  hieroglyphics. 
  "Whew!" said Johnny, after he had puzzled over the characters. 
  "What's it say?" Long Tom wanted to know. 
  "A curse on any one who enters," Johnny explained. "It promises a  number of horrible forms of death to all
  who defy the curse. But it  need not alarm you. These tombs usually have such curses carved upon  them." 
  Monk mumbled thoughtfully, "Yeah, but I always think of that  Tut−ankhamen tomb they opened years ago.
  Didn't just about everybody  concerned with that die in some strange way or another?" 
  "Coincidence, purely," Johnny assured him. 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan did not help Monk's peace of mind when he paused to  stare dramatically at the
  hieroglyphics, then get down and touch his  forehead to the rock before them. 
  At the end of a short corridor beyond the opening was a wall of  masonry blocks, sealed with mortar. 
  The mummy man told Doc Savage, "We will have to remove those  stones." 
  Doc went to work on the joints. His knife had a blade of more than  ordinary temper, and it loosened the
  mortar. Fifteen minutes saw the  first block out, and the rest were easy. 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan spoke in a worried voice. 
  "He says the stones should not have been that easy to remove," Doc  translated. 
  "He thinks they have been tampered with?" Monk exploded. 
  "Something like that." 
  They were prepared for the confusion into which they walked. Great  jars were in fragments on the stone
  floor. Mummy cases had been torn  open, the ornaments − probably gold and jewels − pried off. Mummies
  had  been unwrapped, kicked to pieces. Precious metal inlays had been pried  out of the walls. 
  It had all been done thousands of years ago. 
  "Just another tomb," Johnny groaned, "already rifled." 
  A vast, rumbling noise throbbed against their ears. 
  Chapter 17. THE FIGHT IN THE TOMB
  THE rumble came abruptly at first, like a thunderclap, and its  echoes throbbed and thumped as thunder does. 
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  "Another daggone rain," Monk said hollowly. 
  Doc rapped, "Quick! Hack the way we came!" 
  Monk began, "But what − " 
  "That was explosive, not thunder!" Doc said sharply. "General Ino  and his men must be blowing their way
  out!" 
  They raced for the noise. The disappointment of finding the tomb  empty after so much trouble, instead of
  being a let−down, had enraged  them, made them ripe for a fight. 
  Monk paused to grab Pey−deh−eh−ghan. 
  "You're comm' along," Monk gritted. "And if you think you ain't,  just make a pass at me!" 
  The mummy man was meek. Spirit seemed to have gone out of him. 
  There was another explosion, louder because they were closer. An  instant later the smell of burned powder
  was in their nostrils. 
  Doc, in the lead, heard or saw something, for he blocked their way,  crowded them back around a corner. An
  instant later guns smashed and  lead raked at the stone. 
  "We're in swell shape for a fight!" Renny complained. 
  They were still naked, weaponless. 
  Doc pressed them back until they were behind the stone slab of a  door, existence of which could be detected
  only on close examination. 
  "Wait here," he directed. 
  He produced, from a pocket of a carrier vest which he wore under  his clothing, several small glass balls in a
  metal case. He gave these  to Long Tom. 
  "Anaesthetic grenades," the bronze man explained. "Six of them. All  we have. Use them only as you have
  to." 
  Long Tom exploded, "But you−" 
  Doc did not explain. He glided through the door and closed it  behind him. 
  The bronze man's aids listened. And almost immediately there was a  burst of shots, excited yells. 
  Monk snarled, "I ain't gonna stay here while Doc takes all the  chances!" 
  He lunged for the door, but Renny and Long Tom both got in his way.  Renny let his flashlight go out. 
  "Don't be a sucker," Renny advised. "Doc knows what he's doin'!" 
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  87
  
  "Yes," Ham put in. "Try for once to have some sense!" 
  Renny had not turned his flashlight on again. The device had to be  wound every few minutes, for a spring
  operated the tiny generator that  served instead of a battery. 
  Long Tom grunted suddenly, explosively in the darkness. There were  scuffling sounds. 
  "Hold your breath!" Long Tom yelled. "Pay Day − broke − anaesthetic  grenades − " 
  His warning was too late, for the others had leaped forward and  were already in the anaesthetic gas. They
  could not tell. The stuff was  odorless and colorless. It did not even burn their lungs. 
  The feeling of irresistible drowsiness went warmly over them and  chased away any desire to fight, any
  interest in what was happening or  might happen. The last of the five, and Pey−deh−eh−ghan, were asleep
  before a minute had passed. 
  On the other side of the stone door, General Ino's voice said  loudly, "They're in here. I heard them yell! Help
  me find how this door  opens." 
  It was not a bard door to open, and the anaesthetic gas would not  affect them when they got in. The stuff
  became ineffective after  mingling with the air less than a minute. 
  General Ino warned, "Watch out for that Doc Savage!" and repeated  the admonition in Arabic. 
  DOC SAVAGE was having some difficulty, but not inside the  labyrinthian passages of the tomb. He was
  outdoors. The sky had an  unnatural clarity, if one did not know the desert, and stars were like  a million
  sparks. Storm clouds walled the west, like a skulking monster  that rumbled and snorted lurid flame. 
  The bronze man was trying to climb the sides of the canyon. He had  his silken cord unwrapped to its longest,
  and was flipping the  collapsible grapple upward. Each time it failed to catch and came  clinking back. 
  He changed his position, gliding along the wall of stone, tried  again. No luck. He stepped back. The wall was
  much too sheer. 
  It looked as if every handhold had been carefully chiseled away.  Nature had never made a wall that smooth. 
  After his survey, Doc picked another spot. On the third attempt the  grapple held, but pulled loose when he
  was almost a score of feet up.  He landed with catlike ease from a fall that would have crippled many  men. 
  He tried twice more; then the rope held, and he climbed. Only a  ledge, but it was over halfway up. He threw
  the grapple, and it came  back with heart−breaking regularity. Then it caught. 
  He climbed and stood on the flat top of a table−land. All solid  rock. But it was not level. It sloped from all
  sides, toward the  middle, almost a cup. 
  The bronze man seemed to know what he was doing. He ran down the  sloping stone, careful of his footing,
  and reached a black patch that  was almost circular and nearly ten feet across. 
  it was a hole. Starglow did not penetrate far into it, for it went  straight down. 
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  No loose stones were about. Doc dug out a coin, a half dollar. He  waited until the thunder was quiet in the
  west, then dropped the half. 
  The sound which came up out of the hole was such a noise as can be  made by putting a finger in the mouth
  and pulling it out again, hard. 
  THE bronze man seemed satisfied, as if he had proven something  important. He glided hack to the cliff's face
  and let himself down to  the canyon floor with the grapple. He headed for the mouth of the tomb. 
  The bronze man was always cautious. It was one of the reasons he  had lived. Now he did something that
  might have seemed unnecessary. He  stopped outside the entrance of the barracks chamber from which access
  to the tomb was had. 
  "Didn't you see him?" he called harshly in Arabic. 
  "Wallah!" exploded a voice inside in Arabic. "Did he pass?" 
  There were guards at the entrance. Doc had sounded like one of  them, and they had been deceived. 
  "There is another way out," Doc growled in Arabic. "He escaped by  that route, and may come this way. I am
  coming in to help you watch." 
  He walked boldly into the rock chamber. 
  There were two of the guards. It was dark enough that they did not  recognize him in time. Doc struck one's
  jaw, and the fellow trotted  back against the wall, stood there a moment, then fell on his face. 
  The other grabbed for his rifle trigger. Doc got his hands, brought  an elbow up under the man's ear, then
  swung at his temple. The Bedouin  was quick. He dodged the second blow, backpedaled, got a knife out. He
  had confidence in his knife. He leaped. 
  The knife blade bad been blued, or painted, so that it did not  gleam in the moonlight which was reflected into
  the place. The fellow  did not slash or swing. He held the blade ready for a sudden dart, the  most difficult
  blow to stop or dodge. 
  The under−theear blow had paralyzed the man's throat muscles.  Trying to yell, he made only croakings. But
  he would yell before long. 
  Doc threw his shoulders down, his feet forward. His feet hit the  other's ankles. He upset. Doc grabbed the
  man's legs, but released them  instantly, so that the slash the fellow made with his knife missed. The  swing
  carried the weapon arm around to the man's side. Doc, leaning  forward, made his fist reach the fellow's jaw. 
  Doc got into the Arab's burnoose. It was not a good fit. He carried  the other Bedouin's white garment, and
  both their weapons, and found  the stone trap−door open. 
  The passage and the rooms of the tomb were too quiet. He did not  hear voices, until he reached the chamber
  where they had found evidence  of vandalism − the rifled tomb itself. 
  General Ino was saying, "We had them once, and didn't do it. That's  one mistake we won't make twice. Oui,
  rnonsieurs." 
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  Shaster asked, harshly, "How?" 
  Proudman Shaster sounded as if he were in the grip of his beheading  fever. 
  "Can you cut off a head with that?" the general questioned quietly. 
  "I can make a really wonderful try!" 
  When Doc looked into the chamber, Proudman Shaster was leaning over  Ham with a machete, the same
  weapon with which he had beheaded the  Arabs in the fight which had all been a mistake. 
  DOC had an easy shot with one of the rifles he had just captured.  Shaster, all his teeth showing, his eyes
  popping, set himself for a  blow, and was motionless an instant. 
  The flame from the rifle muzzle seemed to leap almost to Shaster's  knife hand. The shot crashed, thundered,
  died out and left only  Shaster's scream of agony. 
  Two of the Bedoins were furnishing light and odor with torches they  had improvised out of their flowing
  garments. Their surprised leaps  caused showers of sparks to fall. 
  Shaster went to the floor with his mangled hand. He bellowed like a  branded animal, one long bawl after
  another. 
  The white renegade of the Bedouins, Sandy, kept his head better  than the others. His pistol came out of its
  holster spouting lead. 
  Doc did not shoot at him. He got the men with the torches − firing  at their hands. One torch went out. Several
  of the men were shooting by  now. 
  Doc spun, yelled out in his natural voice, so they would have no  doubt about who he was, and ran. He
  traveled fast, for death was at his  heels−and he had a certain spot he wanted to reach in a great hurry. He
  dropped his rifle. 
  He made it − crawled through the opening which was carved to  resemble a great human mouth. Howling,
  shooting, the foes were no more  than a score of feet behind. 
  Doc leaped. His fingers caught the elaborate carving of the  headdress, and he hauled himself up. He had room
  enough to cling there,  just above the opening. But, by little more than stretching their hands  up, the men
  could touch him as they came through. 
  The first of the Arabs charged through. Three of them, shoulder to  shoulder. 
  Doc had dropped his rifle, but he still held a revolver he had  taken from one of the door−guarding Bedoums.
  It was a cheap gun. He  cocked it, and tossed it far down the corridor, in the direction he  would have taken had
  he continued his flight. 
  The gun hit, jarred, off, exploded. That was because it was cheap.  But there was a touch of luck, too. The
  bullet came back and shot two  Arabs through the legs. 
  They squawled, returned the fire, imagining it had come from their  quarry. They were not cowards. They
  charged wrecklessly. 
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  The men flowed under Doc with giddy speed. General Ino and Proudman  Shaster were last. 
  Doc let them get away, then dropped down and ran to his five aids  and Pey−deh−eh−ghan. 
  Chapter 18. WATER
  ThE effects of the anaesthetic gas did not usually wear off in less  than half an hour, and nowhere near that
  time had elapsed. 
  Doc, however, carried − it occupied the tiniest space − a  hypodermic needle containing several shots of a
  drug which, once it was  in the system, neutralized the stupefying effects of the anaesthetic,  and would revive
  a victim in a few minutes. He used that now. 
  Monk, with the physique of the gorilla he resembled, was the first  to turn over and get up. He took a swing at
  Ham, seeing him near, then  fell upon the lawyer and began pounding him. Monk had awakened with  what is
  sometimes called an anaesthetic drunk. 
  Doc grabbed him, shook him, and Monk came out of it. 
  "Well, I've been wantin' to lambaste Ham anyway!" he mumbled. 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan was the last to recover. He got up shakily, looking  bewildered. 
  "I'll bet this modern world is turning out to be quite a thing for  him," Long Tom said, dryly. "I wonder how
  he likes it?" 
  Running feet approached along the passages. Enough of them that  their sound was a dull roar. 
  "Found they were tricked," Doc said. "We had better move!" 
  "This place ain't extensive enough for much fightin'," Monk  complained. 
  Doc scooped up the rifle which he had dropped, picked up another  lying near by. Renny got Proudman
  Shaster's machete. One of the  torch−carrying Arabs had also dropped a weapon, and Johnny appropriated
  that. 
  They scattered, seeking an exit. 
  "Holy cow!" Renny boomed. "There ain't any way out!" 
  But there was. Pey−deh−eh−ghan showed it to them. He shoved on the  wall, and a stone slab fell into another
  passage on the opposite side.  The slab was not hinged. It fell heavily, made much noise, and broke in  several
  pieces, so they could not replace it. 
  They scrambled over the fragments. Several shots banged, and the  bullets narrowly missed Ham, who was the
  last through. 
  "They − must have − kicked me − when unconscious!" Ham gasped. "I  hurt all over!" 
  Monk heard that, rushed back, and helped Ham. This was so  unexpected that Ham nearly fell down. 
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  Ham had no way of knowing it was contriteness which was moving the  homely chemist. Ham had been
  senseless when Monk, anaesthetic drunk,  had pummeled him. But Monk knew that was what had almost
  disabled Ham. 
  They made time − until Pey−deh−eh−ghan suddenly whipped away from  them and ran back toward General
  Ino's men. 
  "FOOL!" Renny bellowed. "He'll get killed." 
  The mummy man was squawling something in his tongue, and when Renny  tried to pursue him, Doc stopped
  the big−fisted chemist. 
  "Listen!" Doc rapped. 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan repeated what he was yelling. 
  Johnny translated. "He says for us to go on! He will lead them off  and lose them on another route!" 
  General Ino's mob had stopped shooting. But they were still coming. 
  Pey−deh−eh−ghan howled something else. 
  "He says to crawl into a niche a short distance down this passage!"  Johnny exploded. 
  "Quiet!" Doc warned. 
  That was so that General Ino's men would not hear them. They were  close. Their hard breathing was audible,
  like many snakes hissing. 
  Then Pey−deh−eh−ghan yelled out shrilly, angrily. It was plain that  he was attracting General Ino's men. He
  succeeded, and they turned  their charge in that direction. 
  Doc and his men were left to themselves. 
  Monk breathed softly, "I've cussed that mummy guy and I've wanted  to wring his neck, but from now on, he
  can have what I've got! He's  risking his life to save ours!" 
  Doc said, "Do not be too sure of that! We had better move!" 
  "Huh?" 
  "Quick! Explanations can wait!" 
  They crept forward quietly, heading for the exit, alert for some  signs of straggling foes. But the enemy
  seemed to have kept together.  They were all on the trail of the mummy man, even Proudman Shaster and  the
  torch bearers with their shattered hands. 
  Creeping along, each of Doc's men unexpectedly found the bronze  giant beside them. He pressed something
  into their hands, something  round and hard and about the size of a garden pea. 
  "Put that in your mouth," he told each one. "Have it ready to break  with your teeth." 
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  "I don't get this," Monk complained. "Pay Day told us to stay in  that niche; but you, Doc − " 
  Ham interrupted, "You're going to talk us all into a grave with  that curiosity of yours. Pipe down." 
  They were in the chamber of the kneeling stone statues when the  great gurgling noise first reached their ears. 
  "Run!" Doc rapped. 
  They ran, but they were not across the room when the water hit  them. It seemed to pour through doors,
  through openings in the ceiling.  Great falls of it, a yard across. 
  "Break those pellets!" Doc shouted. "Keep them in your mouths and  hold your breath!" 
  THE water came down with Niagara violence. The flood of it washed  them off their feet, pummeled them
  about, smashed them against the  statues, washed the statues over. It roared and boiled, and time after  time,
  they fought to the top, until there was no top, for the water had  filled the room completely. 
  Through it all, they kept their mouths closed and did not breathe.  They knew, now, why Doc had told them to
  do that. The pellets held a  chemical. Not oxygen. Some chemical mixture which supplied, for a few  minutes,
  the effect which oxygen supplied upon the human system. 
  After a time, they found the bronze man seeking them out,  assembling them, one at a time, at the door, and
  when they were all  there, guiding them forward swimming until at last they reached the  exit in the barracks
  room. 
  It was no trouble to get out. Water was boiling up through the  hole, for the tomb was completely flooded.
  They were washed out and  onto the floor of the canyon, bruised, ill, and almost suffocated, for  the chemical
  pellets were losing their effect. 
  Doc got them away from the water, and they all lay there for a  time. 
  "The top of the cliff is hollowed out to catch rainwater," Doc  explained at last. "The water runs into a
  reservoir under the rock,  evidently, and it can be made to flood the tomb when a trap is set off.  It must have
  been one of Pey−deh−eh−ghan's traps for robbers who came  to rifle his tomb, or more properly, his treasure
  storehouse." 
  Monk muttered, "Then Pey−deh−eh−ghan drowned himself to get the  rest of us?" 
  "You should know Pey−deh−eh−ghan better than that by now." Doc  said, dryly. 
  "You mean he got away?" 
  "Probably." 
  They found no signs to show that Pey−deh−eh−ghan had gotten away.  They searched. But these black rock
  mountains did not hold a trail.  There was stone everywhere, so hard that it would take no mark from  hobnails,
  much less bare human feet. They did find the pets, Habeas and  Chemistry, roaming. 
  Next, they tried to get into the tomb. The water had filled it, and  Doc's chemical pellets were not effective
  enough to permit them to  explore it. 
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  After they had tried several times, Long Tom said, "If Doc hadn't  guessed what Pay Day was up to, and
  gotten us part of the way out, we'd  never have made it." 
  They were very tired. They slept the rest of the night after a  fashion. 
  Next morning, Doc announced, "We will start a shaft to drain the  tomb." 
  Monk, never backward, suggested doubtfully, "I can get along  without seeing the inside of that place again." 
  "We will drain it," Doc said. 
  THEYdrained it, and the labor took three weeks. They used metal  parts of their plane's motors for tool
  material, and there was plenty  of food from the Arab camp. They sent the shaft in from the canyon  floor, and
  the water ran out for almost three hours. Then they went in  with torches. 
  General Ino, Proudman Shaster, Sandy, the rest, had died. They  found the bodies. 
  They did not find Pey−deh−eh−ghan's body. But they found something  that Pey−deh−eh−ghan, from what
  they had seen of him, would almost have  given his life to keep them from finding. 
  Doc located it after six hours of sounding with a hammer from the  plane. It was not a door, but a stretch of
  the stone which rang hollow.  They spent two hours breaking through. 
  Doc stood beside the opening and motioned Johnny, the  archaeologist. "Want to be first?" 
  "Think it's safe?" Johnny asked, doubtfully. 
  "It may be worth the chance," Doc said. 
  Johnny stepped through, or partway through, and used one of the  flashlights which they had found in the
  plane. He stood there for an  unexpectedly long time. Then he drew hack. His face was distinctly  white, his
  eyes brighter than any of the others ever remembered having  seen them. 
  "It was worth it!" he said, hoarsely. 
  They all went in. 
  When they got out again. they had to sit in the shade of the canyon  wall for some time before they felt like
  discussing what they had  found. Then they spoke about it in whispers, without knowing why − for  they were
  men who had seen fabulous wealth before. 
  "The treasure of Pey−deh−eh−ghan," Johnny said, slowly, and using  small words. "Supposed to be one of the
  great lost hoards of history." 
  "And not exaggerated a darn bit," said Renny, for once not  rumbling. 
  Monk, who occasionally took an interest in jewels, muttered, "I've  been tryin' to figure up what the stuff in
  that first vase, or bowl,  the one next to where we broke in, is worth. Listen, I counted a  hundred and eleven
  diamonds, and not one of 'em less than five carats,  or I'm dizzy!" He sighed. "Aw, nuts! I'm dizzy anyway!" 
  "The first true thing you ever said," Ham remarked, unkindly. 
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  "I wonder," Long Tom pondered aloud, "how much was taken by the  thieves from that outer tomb, the one
  that was vandalized?" 
  "Nothing, probably," Doc said. "There were probably never any  vandals." 
  Long Tom exploded, "I don't get you?" 
  "Pey−deh−eh−ghan," Doc explained, "was a smooth article. It is my  guess that he rigged up that outer tomb
  to make it look as if it had  been sacked, then concealed the entrance to the inner treasure trove  thoroughly. 
  "Any one finding the outer tomb, which was easy to find, but not  too easy, would have thought the place had
  already been ransacked of  all valuables. It was a trick." 
  "If we find him, we'll ask him about that," Long Tom suggested. 
  THEY next heard of Pey−deh−eh−ghan in a queer way. It was after  they were in Cairo, shipping the relics
  from the tomb, converting the  wealth into funds for hospitals and the great charity organization of  which Doc
  was a director. 
  They did not hear of Pey−deh−eh−ghan directly. But they did hear of  a tall, strange−looking man, dark of
  skin, with a flowing white beard  and hair, who had come in out of the desert, unable to speak a word of  any
  language the best interpreters knew. 
  The strange man's picture had been in the newspapers, and Doc got  copies of the journals. 
  It had been Pey−deh−eh−ghan. 
  The strange man's picture had been in the papers because of the way  he had died. He had been walking along
  the street, when he had heard a  radio loud−speaker which stood in front of a music store. Instantly, he  had
  dashed into the street, as if fleeing from the loud−speaker, and a  car had run over him and killed him. 
  The speaker on the radio at the time had been the well−known  American, Doc Savage, announcing the
  discovery of a treasure tomb in  the Nubian Desert. 
  THE END 
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SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/R/Robeson, Kenneth/045 Resurrection Day.pdf