TEXT:  THE FLAMING FALCONS
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
  
  Table of Contents
  THE FLAMING FALCONS..............................................................................................................................1
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson.....................................................................................1
  Chapter I. THE MYSTERIOUS FARM..................................................................................................1
  Chapter II. A GIRL HUNTING MOONDOGS.......................................................................................6
  Chapter III. UGLY BIRD BLAZING......................................................................................................9
  Chapter IV. UGLY BIRD FOLLOWING.............................................................................................13
  Chapter V. DEATH FLIES EAST.........................................................................................................18
  Chapter VI. THE UNUSUAL MAN.....................................................................................................20
  Chapter VII. HOBO JONES MAKES A CATCH.................................................................................26
  Chapter VIII. FIELD EMPTY...............................................................................................................31
  Chapter IX. THE ANGEL FRUITS.......................................................................................................34
  Chapter X. THE SLY MAN..................................................................................................................38
  Chapter XI. PACIFIC TROUBLE.........................................................................................................42
  Chapter XII. A FALCON HUNTING...................................................................................................46
  Chapter XIII. TRICKS AND TRAPS....................................................................................................51
  Chapter XIV. THE JUNGLE AND BAD LUCK..................................................................................56
  Chapter XV. BIRD BATTLE................................................................................................................59
  Chapter XVI. SINISTER RUIN............................................................................................................63
  Chapter XVII. DEVIL BIRDS...............................................................................................................67
  Chapter XVIII. WEIRD FIGHT............................................................................................................72
  Chapter XIX. RAIDERS........................................................................................................................77
  Chapter XX. THE BIRDS THAT KILLED..........................................................................................80
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  i
  
  THE FLAMING FALCONS
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  http://www.blackmask.com
  Scanned and Proofed
  by Tom Stephens
  Chapter I. THE MYSTERIOUS FARM
  • 
  Chapter II. A GIRL HUNTING MOONDOGS
  • 
  Chapter III. UGLY BIRD BLAZING
  • 
  Chapter IV. UGLY BIRD FOLLOWING
  • 
  Chapter V. DEATH FLIES EAST
  • 
  Chapter VI. THE UNUSUAL MAN
  • 
  Chapter VII. HOBO JONES MAKES A CATCH
  • 
  Chapter VIII. FIELD EMPTY
  • 
  Chapter IX. THE ANGEL FRUITS
  • 
  Chapter X. THE SLY MAN
  • 
  Chapter XI. PACIFIC TROUBLE
  • 
  Chapter XII. A FALCON HUNTING
  • 
  Chapter XIII. TRICKS AND TRAPS
  • 
  Chapter XIV. THE JUNGLE AND BAD LUCK
  • 
  Chapter XV. BIRD BATTLE
  • 
  Chapter XVI. SINISTER RUIN
  • 
  Chapter XVII. DEVIL BIRDS
  • 
  Chapter XVIII. WEIRD FIGHT
  • 
  Chapter XIX. RAIDERS
  • 
  Chapter XX. THE BIRDS THAT KILLED
  • 
  Chapter I. THE MYSTERIOUS FARM
  HOBO JONES was a rather pleasant young man who found it necessary to  sleep in haystacks, and this was
  what really started the whole thing.  If Hobo Jones had not wanted to sleep in a haystack in a God−forsaken
  part of Arizona, quite a string of incredible events might not have  happened, and a number of persons would
  have been spared the unpleasant  experience of having their hair stand on end, Hobo Jones among them.
  Hobo Jones supposed himself to be a bum. His pockets were empty. He  had no job. He had�since Mom and
  Pop died of the flu on the rented farm  last winter�no home. That made him a bum, didn’t it? He was
  twenty−four  years old.
  True, he could go on relief. He could get on the WPA, or the PWA,  whichever it was�he had them
  mixed�and make something out of himself.  At least, make twelve dollars or so a week, which was twelve
  dollars or  so more than he was making. But he wouldn’t. Not much, he wouldn’t.
  Hobo Jones was a rugged individualist, and he was going to stick to  it. He was going to keep moving, and
  sometime, somewhere, he was going  to find himself a job. He understood clearly that he might belong in  the
  THE FLAMING FALCONS
  1
  
  class labeled block−heads, because there was no stigma attached to  the WPA or the PWA, whichever it was.
  He knew some pretty swell guys  who were on those jobs. They were all right.
  Hobo Jones was a large sunburned young man who could lift the front  ends of most automobiles. He had a
  big, perpetual grin. He had a thatch  of corn−husk−colored hair that a mother mouse looking for a nest would
  have adored. He was nice to children and dogs, and both frequently  followed him.
  As Hobo Jones walked down a road in Arizona, he noticed it was  getting dark, and almost simultaneously, he
  perceived a haystack.
  "There," he remarked cheerfully, "is my hotel."
  Which was very unfortunate.
  HOBO JONES was ever afterward somewhat uncertain about exactly what  did happen during the next few
  moments. Not that his eyes didn’t  clearly see, and his body painfully feel, what occurred. But the  trouble was,
  his brain refused to accept it as reasonable. Hobo Jones  was a very reasonable, level−headed young man. It
  was hard for him to  believe such events as began occurring.
  There was nothing extraordinary about the haystack, except that as  he drew closer, it began to look more like
  a strawstack. So much the  better. Straw didn’t have seeds that got down your neck and scratched,  the way this
  Arizona hay did. It was just a strawstack.
  The strawstack stood in a dense thicket of mesquite and yucca and  assorted varieties of cacti, so Hobo Jones
  was surprised he had noticed  it. Truthfully, he was surprised he had seen anything, because he  hadn’t
  observed a house in miles. As a matter of fact, he was beginning  to suspect that he had gotten off the road to
  Flagstaff, and was  gandering off into the desert.
  Hobo Jones came to a high wire fence. This seemed to surround the  strawstack. The fence was of woven
  wire, but that didn’t surprise him,  because you probably had to use woven wire to keep herds of Arizona
  jackrabbits away from strawstacks.
  Hobo Jones was feeling good at finding the strawstack, so when he  saw a long piece of two−by−four lying on
  the ground, he picked it up on  impulse. He decided to vault the fence, using the two−by−four for a  pole. It
  was just coltish playfulness�Hobo Jones was full of that.
  He took a run, vaulted�and didn’t make it over. He lit on his feet  on the top wire. Things happened. Sparks,
  mostly. Green ones, that  sounded like spitting tomcats. He would have sworn some of the sparks  were a yard
  long. They seemed to run up his trouser legs.
  Hobo Jones landed flat on his back inside the fence.
  "I’ve been electrocuted!" he thought.
  The fall had knocked his breath out. He was tingling all over from  electricity. He was surprised. Other than
  this, he found upon gaining  his feet, he was as good as before, except for his dignity, which was  distinctly not
  the same.
  He scowled at the electrified fence.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  THE FLAMING FALCONS
  2
  
  "Well, I got over the thing, anyway," he reflected.
  An electrified fence was not exactly the usual item to be found on  the Arizona desert, so Hobo Jones looked
  around to see why and  wherefore. He noticed that the fence seemed rather extensive, obviously  including
  more than a mere strawstack. He walked to the top of a small  hill on which the strawstack stood, and looked.
  A cultivated field was before him. It was little more than  handkerchief size. About an acre, inclosed by the
  electrified fence.
  Something grew in the field. Some vegetable, weed or plant, that was  unlike anything Hobo Jones had seen
  before. The stuff resembled cactus  somewhat, only it was yellowish, about the color of a frog’s stomach,  and
  it couldn’t be conventional cactus because it had no thorns.
  "Maybe it’s good to eat," Hobo Jones mused, and he ambled forward.
  The yellow vegetable was as tough as could be, but he finally got  one off the plant, set his teeth in it, then
  found it necessary to take  out his pocket knife and scrape his teeth. The interior of the  mysterious fruit was a
  whitish−yellow gummy substance that had the  tenacity of glue, and also about the same taste as would be
  expected of  glue made out of a very long dead horse.
  "Ugh! Phew!" said Hobo Jones. "Yah−h−h!"
  He turned around, and there stood a naked man.
  THERE wasn’t any swimming hole close. The surrounding country was as  dry as a fish’s nightmare. It was
  no logical place for a man who was  sans apparel.
  This named man was a long brown collection of sinew and bones, and  distinctly not lovely. He had eyes as
  black as ink−bottle corks.  Remarkably enough, his teeth were also black instead of white.
  "Uh," said Hobo Jones. "Er�hello."
  The brown naked man smiled, showing all his black teeth. He bent  over, picked up a handful of the sand
  which composed most of the soil  hereabouts.
  "Wooley−gooley−guh,"
  he said�or so it sounded�and pointed at the fistful of sand. 
  He obviously wanted Hobo Jones to look at the sand. He walked over,  wearing a big, sociable smile, so Hobo
  Jones, just to be pleasant, bent  over and looked.
  Next instant, the sand had been slapped into his eyes. And he was  flat on his back. And a wild cat was on his
  chest.
  Hobo Jones had been in fights before, particularly of late, but in  these scraps he had just stood on his feet and
  popped the other fellow  one on the jaw, then popped him one again if he got up, which he  usually didn’t. This
  was different. The brown man was as tough as  leather shoestring. He moved like chain lightning. Every place
  he took  hold of Hobo Jones it hurt. The brown man was master of some kind of  heathen science. He also had
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  THE FLAMING FALCONS
  3
  
  surprise on his side.
  Loud howls of pain and rage came from Hobo Jones. He drove his fists  like pistons. Some of the blows
  landed, making his opponent give forth  piping bleats of agony. They rolled over and over. Hobo Jones got
  some  of the blinding sand out of his eyes; he began to see what he wanted to  hit.
  It might have had a very different outcome, except that their  volcanic gyrations carried them across the sand
  to a spot where the  naked brown man, who could see the better, got his hand upon a large  dark Arizona rock.
  He struck Hobo Jones’ skull with this, and the rock  proved much the harder.
  When Hobo Jones opened his eyes and shook the stars out of his head,  he saw that he was beside the
  strawstack. He was being tied hand and  foot with quarter−inch rope. The naked brown man was at the
  moment  finishing the tying.
  The brown man stood up and dusted the sand off his arms, off his  shoulders, and the rest of himself. From the
  way the sand stuck to the  naked brown skin, Hobo Jones decided the fellow was greased all over,  which
  helped explain why he had been so hard to hold.
  The brown fellow picked up a piece of white cloth which was lying on  the ground, and wrapped it around his
  hips with an expertness that  showed he had dressed that way many times before.
  "Help!" Hobo Jones howled, as loud as he could. "Help! Murder!  Sheriff!"
  He didn’t figure it would do any harm.
  The brown man came over. He stuck his thumbs in Hobo Jones’ eyes. He  poured sand in Hobo Jones’ mouth.
  "Woo−gluhoo,"
  he said, approximately. 
  "Listen, my heathen acquaintance," said Hobo Jones, "I don’t  understand a word you say. Let me go! I’ll
  gladly find me another  strawstack."
  So the brown man, not as naked now, dragged Hobo Jones inside the  strawstack.
  IT was quite a thing, that strawstack, for it was a strawstack only  as far as appearance went, being in reality a
  two−room shack made out  of two−by−fours and boards, fitted with electric lights and electric  stove and
  electric refrigerator, and furnished well enough for comfort,  with the straw on the outside, in the shape of a
  conventional  strawstack. There was a faint sound, somewhat like that of a bumblebee  which had accidentally
  landed on a piece of flypaper, and this came  from under the floorboards, so it was not unreasonable to
  suppose that  there was a motor−generator down there, and that this furnished current  for the electrified fence.
  Hobo Jones was becoming puzzled.
  "Say," he said, "what kind of a setup is this, anyway?" 
  He got no answer.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  THE FLAMING FALCONS
  4
  
  "We’re fifty miles from nowhere," added Hobo Jones. 
  He still got no answer.
  "All right, all right," he said. "Have it your own way."
  He was seized, dragged into the other room, which had no furniture  whatever, but was separated from the
  first room by a stout door, and  deposited upon the floor. The brown man went out, slamming the door and
  locking it.
  Hobo Jones was left alone.
  He started to think about the affair, then checked himself. He had a  hunch he couldn’t make sense out of it,
  and would only get himself  dizzy. And maybe scared, too. Thinking was the stuff that got you  scared, wasn’t
  it?�at least, Hobo Jones had discovered that when you  didn’t stop to think, you didn’t have time to get scared.
  More sensible thing to do was investigate the ropes that secured  him. He knew something about ropes,
  because he had tied many a knot in  halter ropes back on the farm, and he had once sent away for a book on
  how the stage magicians escaped from rope bonds and strait jackets,  although unluckily he didn’t recall much
  that had been in the book. He  went to work. He skinned his wrists. He cracked his knuckles. He made  his
  arms hurt.
  Then he heard the squeal in the next room. It was a piping kind of  squeal, shrill, like a stepped−on rat.
  Following the squeal, something heavy fell on the floor.
  Hobo Jones lay very still and listened, but the wham−banging of his  own heart was the loudest thing around
  there. He began to work with the  ropes again. He got them off. He untied his ankles, then he stood up.  The
  circulation was dead in his feet, so that they felt as if they  might be cut off at the ankles. He did a species of
  clog dance,  wincing. Then he went to the door.
  The door was locked.
  "Open!" said Hobo Jones loudly.
  This got no results. He beat on the door, with no better  satisfaction.
  Backing to the far side of the room he took a running jump and  landed with both feet on the door. It ripped
  open. He alighted on his  back on the floor in the other room�and wished he hadn’t done it just  that way. It
  had looked all right one time when he’d seen it in the  movies. But he’d nearly broken his neck.
  The brown man sat in a chair. He did not look up. A splintered  fragment of the door fell across his bare feet,
  and he did not move.  His head was tilted forward as if he was dozing, only it wasn’t likely  that he was dozing.
  "Hey!" said Hobo Jones.
  Getting no response, he walked over and peered closely at the brown  man. The fellow didn’t look right.
  Distinctly not.
  Hobo Jones picked up the brown man’s wrist and held it, and pretty  soon it dawned on him that the brown
  man was dead.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  THE FLAMING FALCONS
  5
  
  "Whew!" said Hobo Jones, and dropped the wrist.
  It was his first contact with a dead man, and he suddenly had the  almighty hope that it would be his last. He
  went hot and cold. Sweat  broke out.
  "Gee!" he said.
  He wanted to take another look at the dead man to see what could  possibly have killed him, but he couldn’t
  bear to do it, and anyway, he  knew that there was no mark on the corpse that would indicate a demise  as a
  result of external violence.
  "Gosh!" said Hobo Jones, and felt the need of the clean desert air.
  He had started for the door when he saw the skull−colored bird.
  Chapter II. A GIRL HUNTING MOONDOGS
  THE skull−colored bird was such a ghastly looking thing that Hobo  Jones emitted a bleat of horror. It was
  that bad. It was�well, the most  hideous apparition it had ever been Jones’ ill fortune to see.
  The thing was about the size of a small goat. It was almost the same  color as a goat, for that matter, and for a
  moment, Hobo Jones thought  it might be a goat. But a goat wouldn’t be sitting perched on the back  of a chair
  in a corner. This thing was a bird. It was foul−looking.
  Hobo Jones had seen buzzards, and hitherto considered them the  vilest−looking things on earth�but a
  buzzard was as attractive as a  love bird along this hobgoblin.
  "Shoo!" Hobo Jones gulped involuntarily. "Shoo! Go away!"
  The thing batted its eyes at him. It had eyes that were like little  blisters full of blood, but the rest of it was all
  one color�the hue of  the skulls in doctors’ offices.
  To top everything off, the bird smelled. It had an odor of  indescribable vileness.
  Longing for the open places seized Jones. He made a dash for the  door, got it open, and piled outside. It was
  dark, so dark that he  stopped as if he had run up against a solid.
  Turning around, he slammed the door. He didn’t want that bird,  whatever it was, following him.
  The first impulse of Hobo Jones was to get out of the vicinity  without delay, but then he decided to stick
  around. He hooked more  sweat off his forehead with a finger. There was a dead man inside the  shack
  camouflaged as a strawstack, and a hell hag of a bird, and Hobo  Jones’ stomach had a feeling as if it had been
  given a dead cat by  accident.
  Why not telephone a sheriff? Good idea. Hobo Jones went looking for  a telephone. There had plainly not
  been one inside the strawstack  shack. The electrified fence should have a gate, and there might be a  telephone
  at that point, so he searched for a gate.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter II. A GIRL HUNTING MOONDOGS
  6
  
  It did not seem quite so dark, now that his eyes had accustomed  themselves to the darkness. About a third of
  the stars were going to  show, but the other two thirds of the sky was full of clouds that were  as black as
  polecats.
  Totally unexpectedly, he got a whack on the head with a piece of  devil’s−walking−stick.
  ONE does not walk across Arizona in a day, and so Hobo Jones had  spent enough time in the State to become
  familiar with its vegetation,  which to his observation was predominantly cactus, so he knew that
  devil’s−walking−stick was a species of cactus, which grew up in a  cluster from a common root−cluster, like
  young willows. These long  shoots of cactus had thorns every half inch or so, and ranchers and  Mexicans cut
  them off, stuck them in the ground in a row, and they grew  and became cactus fences.
  Hobo Jones fell down. A piece of devil’s−walking−stick has some of  the qualities of a length of water pipe.
  The thorns had been cut off  this one.
  Clutching dazedly, Jones got hold of the shillalah that had laid him  low. He twisted. He was surprised at how
  easily he took it away from  the wielder. He instantly reversed it, and took a whack at the adjacent  darkness,
  which proved futile. He tried again.
  "Ouch!" said a voice.
  Hobo Jones started to land another wallop, but didn’t.
  "You’re a woman," Hobo Jones said.
  "If you don’t mind, I’d as soon you didn’t hit me again," the  feminine voice said.
  "I won’t," said Hobo Jones, "I’m chivalrous." He reached out, got  hold of a rather nice ankle, and gave it a
  jerk. The ankle owner sat  down. "You just sit there," requested Jones. "I’ve got a match  somewhere. I want to
  look at you."
  He found the match and struck it and inspected his assailant.
  "Gosh!" he said.
  The match burned his fingers and went out and left him with a  disturbing vision of glorious brown eyes, a
  perfect little snub nose,  lips too delicious for words, and a number of other features that were  equally
  entrancing. She wore riding boots, laced breeches, and a  sky−blue sweater which fitted the curves
  interestingly.
  He felt of his jaw, which was furred with a week’s whiskers,  somewhat cemented together by Arizona alkali
  dust. "I guess I look like  an ape that they had sicked the dogs on."
  "That about describes it."
  "I’m a pretty good fellow, though," said Jones, "when you get to  know me better."
  "Heaven forbid. Now, if you’ll just excuse me�"
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter II. A GIRL HUNTING MOONDOGS
  7
  
  She started to get up. Jones jerked her ankle again. She sat down  with a bump.
  "After all," he remarked, "you hit me a beauty over the head with  that stick, and I think that gives me the
  right to ask some questions.  First, who are you?"
  "All right. My name is Fiesta."
  "And now, Fiesta, what were you doing out here in the dark night?"
  "I was hunting moondogs."
  AFTER more deliberation, Hobo Jones asked, "Do you mind describing  and defining a moondog for me?"
  "Of course not," said Fiesta. "First, moondogs only come out when  there is no moon. You would think they
  would come out when there was a  moon, but they don’t. Only when there isn’t. And�let me see�oh, yes,
  moondogs have large bushy tails, and the tails are full of sparks  like�well�like a cigarette lighter that isn’t
  working. And moondogs  always walk backward. Never forward. That’s because�"
  "I see," said Jones. "Hunting moondog is kind of like snipe hunting.  You’re a sassy pumpkins. Do you know
  what is going on around here?"
  "No."
  "Can you stand something pretty grisly?"
  Fiesta was slow replying. "Well, I didn’t scream when I saw you a  moment ago, did I?" she asked. Then she
  added, more contritely, "I  don’t personally guarantee my nerve, although I have been told that it  is very
  brassy."
  "Come on," said Jones.
  They walked through the darkness toward the strawstack, and Jones,  recalling the devil−devil bird that he had
  left sitting in the shack,  carried along the heavy cactus cane. They stuck themselves on cactus  thorns. Yucca
  seeds rattled like rattlesnakes, and gave them bad  scares. Small creatures, lizards probably, scampered away
  from under  their feet, and also sounded like rattlesnakes. Jones decided he didn’t  like Arizona desert at night.
  "Why, this is only a strawstack," Fiesta said.
  She sounded as if she really thought that was all it was, Jones  reflected.
  "There’s a dead man in here," he said. "Can you stand looking at  him?"
  Fiesta gasped. She was silent. "I�I’ll try," she said. Jones shoved  open the door, and there was everything just
  as he had left it, dead  brown man sitting on the chair dressed in a breechcloth, and hideous  bird sitting on the
  back of another chair in a corner. The odor of the  horror−bird was stronger in the place, Jones decided.
  Fiesta saw the bird. "Ugh!" she said. "How awful!"
  "That thing is some rooster," Jones admitted. "Have any idea what it  is?"
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter II. A GIRL HUNTING MOONDOGS
  8
  
  "No. I never saw anything like it before."
  "And I never saw any moondogs, either."
  Fiesta shuddered. "There�there is not such a thing�as a moondog" she  said.
  "Then what were you doing prowling around in the darkness?"
  "Oh, now�please! Fiesta sounded ill through and through. "I can’t .  . . can’t answer that."
  Suddenly, Hobo Jones remembered a point that might be important.  There had been no odor of the evil bird
  when the brown man had first  dragged him into the shack. Therefore, the bird must have come in  afterward.
  "You know what?" he said.
  "What?" Fiesta gasped.
  "I’m going to take this club"�Jones shook the long piece of  devil’s−walking−stick purposefully�"and knock
  the tar out of that bird,  whatever it is. I don’t like the looks of the thing."
  Fiesta shuddered again, more violently.
  "I’m all for it," she said. "Go ahead." 
  At this point, the ugly bird turned into an incredible sheet of  white flame and a cloud of smoke, and vanished.
  Chapter III. UGLY BIRD BLAZING
  IT did not happen as instantaneously as it could be told, but filled  an interval of several seconds, during
  which there were several  bloodcurdling sidelights to the incident.
  First, there was the sheet of flame, so utterly white as to be  searing to the eyes, and hot enough that the heat
  could be felt on the  face, even at that distance. The flame enveloped the whole bird. It was  like old−fashioned
  photographic flashlight powder burning.
  Secondly, there were the sounds of the girl as it went up in flame.  The noise lasted only a moment, but it was
  quite impressive�it was  several minutes before Hobo Jones’ hair felt as if it had stopped  standing on end.
  Third, there was the smoke, a spurting cloud of it that jumped  upward and swirled around the ceiling of the
  room, then came drifting  toward the door, and poured outside, dense and black, looking so much  as if it was
  alive that Jones made several wild wallops at the stuff  with the long piece of devil’s−walking−stick.
  "Great grief!" he said.
  He realized that Fiesta was no longer at his side. She had departed  in haste. Hobo Jones raced after her,
  overtook her, and got her by the  arm.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter III. UGLY BIRD BLAZING
  9
  
  "What’s the idea," he asked, "of turning race horse?"
  "I’m scared," said Fiesta.
  "Did you see what I saw back there?" asked Jones.
  "I saw a big gray bird as hideous as a witch’s chicken, and I saw  the bird turn into fire and smoke. Is that
  what you mean?"
  "Thanks," said Hobo Jones. "I was beginning to doubt my sanity."
  At this point it was apparent that the shack inside the strawstack  had caught fire, since smoke was pouring
  from the doorway, and this was  reddened by the flicker of flames. Jones ran back, practically dragging  a
  dubious Fiesta, and discovered that the wall was smoldering.  Fortunately, there was a bucket of water in one
  corner, and he sloshed  this judiciously over the flames, extinguishing them. He peered at the  charred boards.
  "That was sure a hot flame that bird turned into," he muttered.
  Of the witch’s chicken, as Fiesta had termed the bird, there was not  a trace that Jones could find, although it
  was true some of the ashes  scattered about might be the remains of the thing.
  "Good riddance," said Jones. He gnawed his lower lip nervously.  "However, I would just as soon it had not
  vanished just the way it did."
  "What is your name?" asked Fiesta.
  "Hobo Jones. I forgot to tell you."
  "Mr. Hobo Jones, does what happened make sense to you?"
  "No."
  "Me, neither," said Fiesta. "What do we do next?"
  Jones considered. "I’m going to have a look at the basement," he  decided.
  There was a trapdoor in the floor, below this some steps, and then a  rectangular concrete room which held
  some boxes of canned food, and a  nationally known brand of motor−generator which was coupled to a Diesel
  motor that was running in efficient silence, and a tank of fuel for the  motor, but nothing else.
  "This must supply current for the electrified fence," said Fiesta.
  "By the way," Jones remarked, "you were inside the electrified fence  when I found you. How come?"
  "I crossed with two long wooden stepladders, which I set up on  either side of the fence," Fiesta said meekly.
  "Good. If things keep on the way they are, I think we shall leave in  great haste by that route." Jones pondered.
  "However," he added, "there is one thing I wish you to see before we  go�the patch of sticky fruit," said Jones.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter III. UGLY BIRD BLAZING
  10
  
  AS nearly as Hobo Jones could tell, the small field of strange  yellow, thornless−cactuslike vegetables were as
  much a mystery to  Fiesta as they had been to himself. He struck some matches so Fiesta  could see the plants,
  and he tore one open and let her get the pulpy  insides on her fingers, so she could see what sticky stuff it was.
  Then they progressed through the semidarkness until they found  Fiesta’s two stepladders, and by climbing
  one of these and descending  the other, it was a simple matter to negotiate the electrified fence  without
  discomfort.
  Jones said, "I was hoping there was a telephone around here. It  might save a long walk, particularly as I don’t
  know which direction to  go to find a sheriff."
  "You’re going to a sheriff?" Fiesta asked.
  "Of course."
  Hobo Jones thought that Fiesta seemed pleased by this information,  and that thereafter she treated him with a
  little more warmth.
  "There is no telephone," Fiesta explained. "I happen to know."
  It had been occurring to Hobo Jones that Fiesta happened to know  several things, and she hadn’t explained
  why she knew any of them. He  broached the subject.
  "Am I your friend?" he asked.
  "So far you haven’t been so bad," admitted Fiesta, "but it remains  to be seen."
  "Then why not tell me all?" asked Jones.
  Fiesta said, "I’ve been considering that�"
  "Fine. Go ahead. Tell all."
  "�and I’ve decided not to tell you anything," continued  Fiesta.
  Jones was injured. He said, "What provoked such a decision?"
  "A suspicious nature," Fiesta informed him. "After all, I hardly  know you."
  "We’ll let a sheriff introduce us," said Jones, and he took her arm,  and they started off.
  Fiesta said, "I have a car. That is, it used to be. I only paid  nineteen dollars for it. I told the man I would give
  him a dollar for  every year of my age, because it was my birthday, and we made a deal."
  "Where is this birthday−cake car?"
  Fiesta pointed generally southward. "Over yonder, behind a rock."
  There were five or six men waiting behind the rock also, they  learned, and these were unpleasant fellows with
  guns and bad intentions.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter III. UGLY BIRD BLAZING
  11
  
  JONES thought he’d heard something just before they reached the  rock, and he’d stopped to listen, and Fiesta
  had walked on ahead. This  explained how they happened to be separated in the darkness when a deep  bull
  voice roared an order.
  "Get your hands up!" said the voice.
  Jones stopped, wishing it wasn’t so infernally dark. "Sheriff!" was  his thought. "Sheriff and deputies. How
  fortunate."
  That this was a misapprehension became evident as the situation  developed.
  "Shall I shoot ‘em?" growled another voice.
  "Sure!" said the bull voice. "Shoot ‘em!"
  A gun roared. A bullet fanned Hobo Jones’ face. He was suddenly glad  it was so dark.
  It wasn’t any sheriff and his deputies. Not much. Following the  shot, a series of things happened with the
  speed of a bad automobile  accident.
  Fiesta threw herself flat on the ground.
  "Run, Jones!" Fiesta screamed. "They’ve seized me! Run!" They hadn’t  exactly seized her yet, but it looked
  as if they as good as had done  so. "They’ve got me! Run, Jones!" she shrieked. "Run, you fool!"
  She heard Jones go tearing off through the sagebrush, cactus and  mesquite. He sounded like a mowing
  machine. A rifle crashed. The bullet  hit a rock, climbed into the dark sky with the howl of a wolf. A
  sawed−off shotgun turned loose two ear−splitting blasts. Men yelled  profanity.
  A peculiar thing happened�one of those accidents that occur when  people are excited and doing things wildly.
  Fiesta had informed Jones that she had been seized because she had  wanted him to believe that he could not
  help her, and save himself.  Fiesta had made it so lifelike that Jones had believed her.
  Actually, the bull−voiced man and all his helpers likewise presumed  that Fiesta had been seized. It was very
  dark. They couldn’t see one  another. Each of them thought one of the others was holding Fiesta, so  they went
  charging away in pursuit of Hobo Jones.
  Fiesta was left scot−free. She got up off the sandy ground, amazed,  and stood listening to the gun−bangings,
  yells and other bedlam that  accompanied the pursuit of Jones.
  She clenched and unclenched her hands, feverishly anxious, trying to  think of something she could do to help
  Jones. There was nothing. She  was unarmed. She had never fired a gun in her life, anyway. And there  were at
  least five bloodthirstily determined men chasing poor Jones,  all armed�and shooting freely, by the sounds.
  Fiesta stared at the  cloud−cluttered sky and emitted a prayer.
  "Let it stay very dark," she said.
  It did.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter III. UGLY BIRD BLAZING
  12
  
  In the course of a few minutes, Fiesta decided that Hobo Jones, as a  foot racer, was more than the match for
  the group of men who had  waylaid them. Jones obviously had gotten away. The disgusted swearing  of his
  pursuers must be audible as far as New Mexico.
  Fiesta climbed into her birthday−cake car. It was time she was  making her own escape. She turned the
  switch, breathed another prayer,  stepped on the starter, and there was a miracle and the motor began  running,
  sounding as if a charivari was in progress. She turned on the  headlights, which furnished about the same
  illumination as lightning  bugs, put the car in gear, and drove down the road. She drove fast. If  one did not
  mind noise, the car would go fast, up to forty miles an  hour.
  Fiesta looked around from time to time, and this was how she  happened to discover that a bird was following
  her.
  Chapter IV. UGLY BIRD FOLLOWING
  HAVING seen the bird�the clouds had parted again and there was some  moonlight�Fiesta involuntarily
  emitted a screech of horror. Then she  endeavored to get hold of herself.
  "I’ve got birds on the brain," she assured herself. "Anyway, this is  just a little old dinky bird."
  She looked backward again.
  The bird had seemed small only because it was some distance away,  but it was coming closer, and there
  began to be no doubt about it being  a very big bird.
  "Oh!" said Fiesta. "Oh, oh!" And she stepped on the gas. 
  She drove in a frenzy, around a curve, down into a gully and out  again, then onto a straight stretch where she
  dared again remove her  eyes from the road long enough to glance behind.
  "It’s the witch’s chicken!" gasped Fiesta.
  Back in the strawstack shack, the horrible bird sitting on the  chair�if this wasn’t that bird, it was its twin
  brother�had  appeared to be about the size of a small goat. Flying behind the car,  pursuing Fiesta, it looked as
  large as an airplane.
  The hideous skull−colored thing flew like a bat, silently flapping  its wings, malevolent head extended on the
  end of a long neck.
  Fiesta stamped the accelerator.
  "Hurry, car!" she said wildly.
  Unfortunately, they were just beginning the ascent of a long hill,  and one of the things that Fiesta had already
  learned about her  birthday car was that it didn’t like hills, often preferring to stop  and cool off halfway up
  them.
  Fiesta looked around. After that, she decided not to do it again.  She didn’t want to faint.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter IV. UGLY BIRD FOLLOWING
  13
  
  She could smell the flying hag−frightful. Its shadow, limned  in starlight, actually fell over her. A cold wave
  traveled up and down  Fiesta’s spine.
  "Go away!" she shrieked. "Shoo!"
  That the bird was after her was absolutely apparent. That it  would get her seemed a complete certainty,
  because its foul odor was  choking her, and its great flapping bulk was no more than a yard above  her, and its
  hideous beak was reaching down, and its blood−sac eyes  were contemplating her uncharitably.
  And then the car topped the hill, headed down a long slope beyond,  and ran like it had never run before. The
  hill was very long, very  steep, and as for Fiesta’s old car�well, it was doubtful if Sir Malcolm  Campbell
  could have made better time in the Bluebird.
  The bird was outpaced. Pretty soon, it gave up and turned back.
  Fiesta was still shaking when she walked into her hotel in the  Arizona metropolis where she was staying.
  "Did you ever have a bird follow you?" she asked the clerk.
  The clerk glanced over her with approval.
  "A lot of different kinds of birds must try to follow you," he  remarked.
  "You’ve no idea," said Fiesta.
  And she shuddered so hard she almost fell.
  The room which Fiesta had obtained in the hotel was one of the most  economical the hostelry afforded, and it
  was all right, although the  plumbing was of the arm−strong variety�you opened the window and threw  the
  water out after you washed�and the mattress was stuffed, she  suspected, with kindling wood.
  Fiesta sat on the edge of the bed. She cupped her shapely chin in a  palm. She thought deeply.
  "This is once," she remarked finally, "that I outsmarted myself."
  She considered the statement, nodding soberly.
  "I should have called this Doc Savage," she said, "first thing."
  FIESTA’S boots, laced breeches and trim sweater were all somewhat  the worse for violent contact with the
  desert, and she had the  sickening suspicion that she could detect traces of the smell of the  bird on the
  garments, so she changed hastily into a frock. A neat  rust−colored frock, with suitable accessories, that set
  her figure off  particularly. She arranged her hair in the mirror, reflecting that  there were now few traces of a
  violent and incredible night. Hobo Jones  would have especially liked her now.
  Thinking of Hobo Jones gave Fiesta a wave of worry. Hobo Jones was a  young man who had evidenced some
  capacity for taking care of himself,  but she could not help being deeply concerned.
  "I should tell the sheriff," said Fiesta.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter IV. UGLY BIRD FOLLOWING
  14
  
  Then she shook her head at her own remark.
  "No. No, that would mess it up," she added. "The sheriff would spoil  everything, as likely as not. This is a
  very mysterious matter, and it  requires a touch that a sheriff might not have."
  She gave her hair a final pat�she had the feminine characteristic of  keeping her appearance in mind, no
  matter how drastic a situation she  was in�and went over to sit on the edge of the bed again. Suddenly, she  got
  up, put on her coat, went downstairs and addressed the desk clerk.
  "I’m practically broke," said Fiesta. "I have almost absolutely no  money, and I want to make a long−distance
  telephone call to New York  City. I want the hotel to stake me, and I will pay back, getting the  money
  somehow."
  "Telephone call to New York?" said the clerk. "You want us to pay?"
  "Yes. It’ll be awfully sweet of you." Fiesta smiled.
  The clerk didn’t smile. He shook his head.
  "What kind of a sucker do you take us for?" he asked. "The answer is  no. No!"
  "So you’re going to be ungenerous," said Fiesta.
  "Yes," agreed the desk clerk. "And furthermore, you must pay in  advance for your room, or we will have to
  ask you to vacate."
  Fiesta gasped, "But I told you I didn’t have any money."
  "I heard you."
  "But how am I going to telephone Doc Savage?" Fiesta cried  furiously, and ran outdoors. Most of the dark
  clouds had gone away, and  the moon had come out. Fiesta gazed at the moon resentfully.
  "See what I get," she said, "for being frank."
  One of the big transcontinental airlines had a field at this Arizona  town, and Fiesta walked�she had no money
  for a taxi�to the airport,  where she confronted the young gentleman whose occupation it was to  dispense
  tickets.
  "I’m going to be frank just once more," said Fiesta.
  "Eh?"
  "I am without funds, and it is very important that I get to New York  City, since I cannot telephone,"
  explained Fiesta. "I wish the airline  to trust me for a ticket to New York. I will pay back, because I am
  honest."
  The ticket seller batted his eyes several times.
  "Do you think," he inquired, "that I came out of a tree?"
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter IV. UGLY BIRD FOLLOWING
  15
  
  "You mean�do I think you’re a sap?" asked Fiesta.
  "Exactly."
  "I will pay back�"
  "No, no, NO! Great Scott, the idea is preposterous!"
  Fiesta was near tears.
  "But how am I going to see Doc Savage?" she cried desperately, and  whirled and ran out of the airport
  waiting room, and hurried back to  the hotel, where she got a large pleasant shock.
  The hotel clerk was all smiles�he had been all frowns when Fiesta  left.
  "I’m terribly, terribly sorry," said the clerk, bowing very low. "I  want to apologize abjectly, most abjectly.
  You may telephone New York  City long distance. The hotel will pay the bill, and you can pay us  back just
  whenever you like, with no hurry, no hurry at all. And as for  your room rent, don’t worry about that. No,
  don’t worry. And we want  you to move into our best suite of rooms. The rent will be the same as  you’re
  paying for that little room you’re in now."
  "Goodness," said Fiesta. "What did you say?"
  "You may telephone New York and we will pay."
  "And�"
  "We want you to have our finest suite of rooms, at the same rent  you’re now paying, and don’t worry about
  when you have to pay for it."
  "Gracious," said Fiesta.
  At this point, the ticket seller from the airport rushed in. He was  out of breath. He had an envelope in his hand.
  "Here’s your airplane ticket to New York," he puffed.
  "What?" said Fiesta.
  "We’re giving you a special plane," explained the airport man,  "because we have no regular ship scheduled to
  leave immediately."
  "But," reminded Fiesta, "I have no money."
  "That’s perfectly all right. That’s perfectly all right. We�er�trust  you."
  Fiesta looked at the hotel clerk, then at the young man from the  airport. She tapped the floor thoughtfully
  with one foot.
  "Just what," she asked, "changed your minds so quick?"
  "You mentioned Doc Savage," said the hotel clerk.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter IV. UGLY BIRD FOLLOWING
  16
  
  "Yes, you mentioned Doc Savage," agreed the airport man.
  "You mean," said Fiesta, "that�well�"
  "Yes," said the hotel clerk, "we’ve heard of Doc Savage."
  "That’s it," said the airport man. "We’ve heard a little bit about  Doc Savage."
  AT this point, a lean brown man who was almost naked, turned from  the hotel window and took to his heels.
  The hotel window was open, the  semiclothed brown man had been listening, and had heard what was said.  He
  had also been following Fiesta almost from the moment she arrived in  town.
  The brown fellow, his dark color making him almost indistinguishable  in the darkness, scampered
  industriously to a hiding place where there  was a white man waiting, but the white man wore dark clothes and
  had a  black handkerchief over his face, so he was not very noticeable in the  night, either.
  "She go to New York. Airplane," said the brown one.
  "Swell. Good riddance."
  "She go see fella name of Doc Savage," added the brown one.
  "She�what? Who did you say she’s gonna see?"
  "Doc Savage."
  "Oh, great grief!" groaned the white man. He sounded as if he had  just discovered that someone had cut off
  both his legs.
  He began swearing. He swore up and down the scale, and in at least  four different languages, and when he
  finished, he grabbed his  brown−skinned cohort and gave him an unjustified shaking.
  "You get back to the hotel," he snarled. "You know how to tap a  telephone wire, don’t you?"
  "Yes. Know how tap telephone," assured the brown one.
  "Tap it. Get the girl’s plans."
  "Yes."
  "We’ve got to stop that girl. We can’t have her reaching that Doc  Savage."
  "Who this Doc Savage fella?" asked the brown one.
  The white man just swore at him.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter IV. UGLY BIRD FOLLOWING
  17
  
  Chapter V. DEATH FLIES EAST
  THIRTY minutes later, Fiesta settled back in the seat of an airplane  that was larger than she imagined they
  came, and noticing that the  little light beside her seat no longer said, "Fasten your safety  belt, please," she
  presumed that everything was now all right, and  undid her belt. She felt the need of some good relaxing.
  Fiesta was stunned. The machine guns had really gone off, these last  thirty minutes. Here she was, the sole
  passenger on a big airplane,  with a pilot, copilot and a hostess at her service.
  "Oh, boy!" she remarked.
  First, she had telephoned Doc Savage in New York City. She was  impressed by the voice of Doc Savage, she
  was ready to admit. Even over  a couple of thousand miles of telephone wire, it had a vibrance, a  controlled
  quality, that had been outstanding.
  True, Doc Savage had spoken very little. Mostly, he had listened.  After Fiesta had spoken for a while, the
  unusual voice had interrupted.
  "Take the special plane they have offered you, and go to Wichita,"  he said. "You will be able to make
  connections at that point with a  regular transcontinental plane at four o’clock in the morning, which  you will
  board, and ride to New York City."
  It occurred to Fiesta to wonder that he knew the exact time a  regular passenger plane would be in Wichita.
  She generally had  questions to ask. For instance, just who was this Doc Savage, anyway?
  Fiesta pressed the little button beside her seat, the one marked  "Hostess." The trim hostess appeared instantly.
  "Who," asked Fiesta, "is Doc Savage?"
  The hostess smiled. "A man," she said, "who is�well, quite a fellow.  You’ve kind of got me, honey. I don’t
  know how to describe him. You  couldn’t describe the Grand Canyon, could you?"
  "Oh, he’s like that," suggested Fiesta. "A great big thing full of  empty space."
  The hostess shook her head.
  "You’ll learn, you’ll learn," she said.
  THE plane flew on and on, over a vast infinity of clouds. 
  The hours passed� 
  The plane gave a sudden tilt, dived downward. Fiesta, after almost  sliding out of her seat, sprang up in a
  dither.
  "What’s happening?" she exclaimed.
  "Just take it easy," the copilot advised.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter V. DEATH FLIES EAST
  18
  
  Fiesta pressed her face to the plane window. It was still dark, but  bright moonlight, and once again, no
  clouds. She could see the terrain  below. They were going to land in Wichita, she remembered, so this  might
  be Wichita.
  But they obviously weren’t descending at Wichita. There was nothing  below but uninhabited vastness. No
  lights of a city, or of farm homes.  Just a great deserted−looking level country with no fence or house or
  anything.
  "This isn’t Wichita!" cried Fiesta.
  "No," said the copilot. "It isn’t."
  Fiesta looked at the copilot’s face. When she had boarded the plane,  the copilot had impressed her as having
  the same kind of a face as the  pilot, a firm, efficient one, the kind of a face that belonged to a man  who was
  accustomed to, and entirely capable of, holding human lives  perfectly safe in his two hands for long hours at
  a stretch. Now she  didn’t know.
  Fiesta now did what she had felt like doing several times this night.
  She fainted.
  AT six minutes to four o’clock that morning, the plane which had  taken off from the Arizona town with
  Fiesta landed at the airport in  Wichita, Kansas. There was no time wasted. The ship taxied across the
  runways, stopped only a few yards from the regular transcontinental  passenger liner which had arrived, and
  was due to depart at exactly  four o’clock. A small feminine figure sprang out of the Arizona plane,  ran to the
  regular passenger ship, and climbed inside.
  The regular passenger ship took off in its scheduled fashion. It was  not heavily loaded, less than a dozen
  passengers.
  Shortly the passenger liner was gone into the night, and only its  roaring echo remained.
  Nothing happened until a farmer near Millard, Missouri, was awakened  by a commotion made by all of his
  chickens flying wildly out of the  peach tree in which they had been roosting.
  It wasn’t a hawk. It was a big plane, and it landed in the calf  pasture below the orchard, collided with a hedge
  fence before it  stopped rolling, and halted standing partially on its nose.
  "Maw!" yelled the farmer. "Oh, maw! Airplane wreck!" 
  He put on his pants, rushed to the plane, opened the door, hollered,  "Anybody hurt in there?" then climbed
  inside. He was inside the plane  for, at the longest estimate, twenty seconds. He popped out, looking as  if he
  wanted badly to run, like Potlicker, his hound dog, had already  done, and hide under the barn.
  "Maw," he said to his wife, who had joined him, "maw, they’re all  dead in there. And there’s something else
  in there�a bird."
  His wife sniffed. "I ain’t afraid of no bird, paw. Get out of the  way and let me look."
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter V. DEATH FLIES EAST
  19
  
  She climbed into the plane. She got out again more suddenly than her  husband, and wearing about the same
  expression.
  "Oh, my!" she said.
  "You see the bird, maw?"
  "I�saw�it."
  It took some time, but they got up their courage, and looked into  the plane again, holding hands like children,
  because they were scared.
  The bird was still there, sitting in the aisle of the plane, down  front. It was the size of a small goat, and the
  color of a skull in a  doctor’s office, and it had eyes like the blood blisters that raised on  the farmer’s hand
  whenever he pinched it in the mowing machine. It was  a horrendous thing.
  The farmer and his wife were still looking in at the bird when the  bird suddenly turned into a white sheet of
  flame, emitted squealing  sounds fully as awful as its appearance justified, and burned into  nothingness,
  apparently. The heat of the blazing bird was terrific, and  naturally the metal skin of the plane melted and the
  side of one of the  gas tanks, and there was an explosion, and an even greater fire.
  The plane burned itself into a tangled mass of black metal and awful  smoke, while the farmer and his wife ran
  futilely back and forth from  the well with buckets of water.
  After the plane had burned, there was nothing whatever to show that  there had been a horror bird, and the
  bodies of the passengers were  burned beyond identification.
  What happened when the sheriff and the State police were called was  exactly what might have been expected
  would happen. The farmer told his  story�everyone dead in the plane, a hag−goblin of a bird sitting  there�and
  it was unanimously decided that the farmer was nuts.  Bughouse. Such things didn’t happen.
  The farmer’s part of it ended when he went to the barn, sat on a  manger, chewed tobacco, and cussed
  uneasily. Crazy?
  He wasn’t sure himself.
  Chapter VI. THE UNUSUAL MAN
  FIESTA knew nothing about a planeful of dead landing in a farmer’s  calf lot, and the rest of it, for the very
  good reason that she wasn’t  on the plane. She was not quite a thousand miles from the spot. But  almost.
  Truthfully, Fiesta didn’t know where she was. Where she didn’t want  to be, that was certain. She was not a
  swearing girl, but she had  thought up some appropriate words to describe what she thought of  airplane pilots,
  copilots and hostesses, and had said them as loud as  she could. It hadn’t seemed to do much good. Except
  that it had badly  scared a jackrabbit which had been under a sagebrush, and the  jackrabbit’s precipitous
  leaving had in turn scared Fiesta.
  "Oh, Lord," she moaned. "If this isn’t a mess."
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter VI. THE UNUSUAL MAN
  20
  
  Except for the jackrabbit, there appeared to be no living moving  thing, as far as the eye could reach. Fiesta
  had climbed a small hill,  from which eminence her eye had been able to reach a considerable  distance.
  "If I just hadn’t fainted," complained Fiesta.
  She had fainted in the plane. She had revived on the ground, with no  plane around, not even a sound of one.
  True, there was a parachute spread out on the sagebrush near by.  There’d been some fairly disturbing minutes
  when Fiesta had wondered if  they had dropped her, while she was unconscious, from the plane by  parachute,
  but she had dismissed that idea upon examining the ‘chute,  and finding that it had obviously been spread by
  hand over the  sagebrush�and tied there.
  The parachute was there for some purpose. Why, exactly? Time would  tell.
  It had taken some deliberation on Fiesta’s part to decide to leave  the ‘chute where it was, lashed, all spread
  out, to some large clumps  of sagebrush. She couldn’t very well be worse off than she was, could  she?
  The sun seemed to warm itself from the exertion of climbing in the  sky. It became very hot. Some prairie
  dogs came out of their holes and  yipped at Fiesta, jerking their little tails with each yip.
  A plane appeared. A big plane, roaring like a foghorn. It slanted  down in the sky.
  "Oh, ho!" decided Fiesta. "That parachute, all spread out, was a  marker so someone could find me."
  She ran and hid under a sagebrush at some distance, near an alkali  flat which she had noticed, and thought at
  the time that if a plane  landed, it would likely land there.
  The big plane came down. It was streamlined, Fiesta decided, as no  plane she had ever seen. Every curve
  bespoke fleetness, and every bark  of the motor, power.
  It landed on the alkali flat. The pilot got out. He wore a plain  business suit, and seemed to be a remarkably
  large man, although Fiesta  did not get a good look at his face. 
  Fiesta crawled to the plane.
  She couldn’t fly a ship, but she figured she could get inside, sit  in the cockpit, and make it run across the
  ground without taking to the  air, and thus escape the man, if that became necessary.
  With this idea, she grasped the handle to open the plane door. She  twisted the handle. The door didn’t open.
  Instead, two metal arms  whipped out, encircled her, and clamped her to the side of the plane.
  It happened instantly. One moment, Fiesta stood there. The next  instant, an unexpected mechanical gimcrack
  of some kind held her fast  against the plane. She struggled. The thing only got tighter. Not tight  enough to
  hurt, but plenty tight nevertheless. 
  The man came back. 
  "Hello," he said.
  Fiesta knew the voice. She’d heard it over a telephone. 
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter VI. THE UNUSUAL MAN
  21
  
  "You are Doc Savage," she said.
  FIESTA looked at Doc Savage, and began to understand what the  airplane hostess had been talking about,
  and why the hotel clerk, and  the airline ticket seller had undergone such change at the mention of  this
  fellow’s name.
  Doc Savage was a bronze giant of a man, how much of a bronzed giant  you had to be close to him to realize,
  because he seemed to have a most  remarkably symmetrical muscular development throughout. Judging from
  the sinews noticeable in his bronzed neck, and on the backs of his  long, powerful hands, he must possess
  physical strength somewhat  approaching the fabulous.
  But the most remarkable thing about him was his eyes, these being of  a peculiar flake gold quality, the gold
  flakes seeming as if they were  always stirred by small winds. There was a compelling quality about the  eyes.
  They were friendly, and yet they were the kind of eyes that could  make someone mighty uneasy.
  "Turn me loose from this�this gimcrack!" Fiesta requested.
  "You are Fiesta Robertson?"
  "Yes."
  The big bronze man went forward somewhere, touched something, and  this released the mechanical gadget
  which held Fiesta. Doc came back  and apologized.
  "That thing may seem rather simple−minded to you," he said, "but you  would be surprised how many times it
  has caught prowlers who were  trying to steal my planes. All of the ships we use are now equipped  with them."
  "We?" said Fiesta. "Are you twins, or something?"
  "My associates," Dr. Savage explained. "There are five men  affiliated with me in our unusual profession.
  Two of them, Monk Mayfair  and Ham Brooks, I might add, are going to assist in this present  mystery."
  "I see," said Fiesta.
  She had not cut a very impressive figure upon this, her first  meeting with the bronze man, and she was a little
  irked. Which, if she  had stopped to think, would have surprised her. Usually, she didn’t  give a hoot what the
  men thought.
  "And what is this profession of yours?" asked Fiesta. "Let’s get  that straight."
  Doc Savage looked uncomfortable. So uncomfortable that Fiesta felt  better. Here, she reflected, is a fellow
  that, even if he does have the  darnedest reputation I ever run into, is scared of women. Men who are  scared of
  women are my meat!�she remembered additionally.
  "Well," said Doc Savage, ill at ease, "I guess you would call our  profession righting wrongs and punishing
  evildoers, going to the far  corners of the earth if necessary."
  "That sounds silly," said Fiesta.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter VI. THE UNUSUAL MAN
  22
  
  The bronze man made no reply to that.
  "How much do you generally get paid for a good deed?" asked Fiesta.
  The bronze man did not answer that immediately, either. He merely  looked at Fiesta. The young lady became
  uncomfortable herself. She  flushed.
  "I’m sorry," she said.
  "That is all right," said the big bronze man. "Our profession is a  bit unusual."
  "I’m really sorry," said Fiesta contritely. "I’m a sassy thing, and  some day somebody is going to knock my
  block off." She drew a deep  breath, and pointed at the surrounding scenery, which she didn’t care  for in the
  least. "What am I doing in this�this place?"
  "You were left here so I could pick you up."
  "I was?"
  "Yes. After you talked to me, I immediately communicated by radio  with the pilot who was to fly you from
  Arizona to Wichita. He agreed to  leave you in a nice lonesome stretch of desert, and mark the spot with  a
  parachute."
  "But why?"
  "Precaution."
  "I don’t get this," said Fiesta. "Was I in danger?"
  Instead of responding with words, the big bronze man produced a  newspaper�the first edition of a Wichita
  morning paper�and handed it to  the young woman. The newspaper contained the story of the plane that  had
  landed in the Missouri farmer’s calf lot.
  BY the time she finished reading, Fiesta had become quite pale.
  "This is the plane I would have been on!" the young woman said  chokingly.
  "Yes."
  "Who�did someone take my place on that plane at Wichita?"
  "Yes, the stewardess on the plane that brought you from Arizona to  Wichita."
  Fiesta’s lip trembled. "That�girl�I talked to her. Oh, she died on  my account!" Suddenly Fiesta was in tears.
  She sank down on the sand  and sobbed quietly, and after a time, she dried her eyes and looked up.
  "This is terrible, isn’t it?" she said in a strained voice.  "Somebody obviously tried to kill me. And there’s only
  one reason. It  was because I was on my way to New York to see you."
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter VI. THE UNUSUAL MAN
  23
  
  "That seems logical," the bronze man admitted.
  There was a quiet confidence about this giant of a fellow, Fiesta  realized, that was definitely soothing. She
  watched him sit on the sand  and take his knees in his arms; he looked into the distance  thoughtfully�not
  looking at her, she thought, in the way that almost  all men did. She wondered if he was really scared of young
  women. It  looked as if he was not in the habit of having much to do with them.
  "Suppose you tell me," said Doc Savage, "the whole story."
  Fiesta nodded.
  "I had a brother," she said. "He was older than I. He would be  thirty−four now. Four years ago, he went to
  Indo−China, exploring. We  never heard from him again, until�"
  She fumbled in the front of her frock and brought out a tobacco sack  which had been suspended around her
  neck by a string. Inside the sack  was a paper, which she extracted, unfolded, and extended.
  "A week ago, I got this letter in the mail," she said. "Read it."
  Doc Savage took the missive, and read:
  Sis:
  They are holding me. Making me work for them. I do not know where I  am being held, except that it is in
  Indo−China somewhere. But here is  how you can find me.
  Get a man named Doc Savage in New York City to help you. He is a  specialist in such things. Then find a
  man named Fenter Bain, who is at  present in Bowlegs, Arizona, on some kind of secret work. Fenter Bain
  knows where I can be found.
  Be careful. This Fenter Bain is dangerous.
  And for the sake of all that is holy, help me. This is the  nineteenth letter I have tried to smuggle out.
  DAVE ROBERTSON.
  DOC SAVAGE finished reading, then scrutinized the missive  thoughtfully, and finally carried it to the plane,
  produced a small  metal case which, when open, proved to hold a number of chemicals,  which he applied to
  the letter. He used a microscope. He took some time.
  "This letter," he said, "was written about three months ago, with  ink made from a type of wild berry which
  grows in the interior of  Indo−China. The paper on which it is written is Siamese, being  manufactured in
  Bangkok. The latter deduction is easy, because of the  postmark. It is in your brother’s handwriting?"
  "YES, the letter is my brother’s handwriting," said Fiesta grimly.
  "Then it must be genuine."
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter VI. THE UNUSUAL MAN
  24
  
  "I think so."
  "It does not tell much." 
  "I know."
  "What is your brother’s profession?"
  "He is a horticulturist. Specializing particularly in rare tropical  plants. It was to collect plants in the
  Indo−China jungle that he went  exploring."
  The bronze man nodded and returned the letter.
  "And now," he said, "why didn’t you call on me in the first place,  instead of going to Bowlegs, Arizona,
  alone?"
  "I had only enough money for a bus ticket to Bowlegs, Arizona, and  enough left over to buy an old jellopy of
  a car to snoop around in,"  Fiesta confessed. "And I guess I was too self−confident, on top of  that.
  Furthermore, I had never heard of you."
  If the fact that she had never heard of him had any effect on the  bronze man’s composure, it was not evident.
  If anything, he looked a  little pleased.
  "Have you learned anything around Bowlegs?"
  Fiesta shook her head ruefully. "Very little. I located this Fenter  Bain. He is not a nice−looking person. I
  never talked to him. I just  followed him. Every day or two, he would go out into the desert, where  there was a
  strawstack, or what I thought was a strawstack, and a field  of some yellowish−looking vegetables, surrounded
  by an electrified  fence. Night before last, I went out there, only I didn’t know the  fence was electrified, and I
  got knocked for a loop. So last night, I  tried again. I took two stepladders, and got over the electrified  fence. I
  was hardly inside, and I met this young man, Hobo Jones."
  "What kind of a person was Hobo Jones?" Doc Savage asked.
  "He was nice," Fiesta confessed. "Right nice." She remembered when  she had last seen Hobo Jones, racing
  off through the sagebrush,  mesquite and cactus, with enemies in pursuit. Her face paled. "I hope  he got
  away," she said earnestly.
  "And this�bird," Doc Savage said. "What about the flaming bird?"
  "Ugh!" said Fiesta.
  "Describe it," Doc requested.
  Fiesta did so, giving a very graphic and lucid description which,  however, hardly did justice to the horror of
  the bird. Words could  scarcely do that.
  "There is no such bird," Doc Savage announced, when she had finished.
  "Just wait until you see one," said Fiesta, "and you’ll think  differently."
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter VI. THE UNUSUAL MAN
  25
  
  Fiesta was nervous and angry about the whole thing, and she didn’t  know whether or not Doc Savage had
  insinuated she was not telling the  truth. She walked away a few paces, gave an irate kick at the  ground�and
  broke the heel off her slipper.
  "Oh!" she gasped. "My only pair of slippers!"
  "I’ll fix it," Doc Savage told her in a friendly way. He picked up  the heel and took the slipper off which it had
  come, then held out his  hand, saying, "Here, give me the other one, too."
  "But the heel is only broken off one slipper," Fiesta explained.
  "I’ll strengthen the other while I am at it," the bronze man  explained. "You wait here in the shade of the
  plane."
  Fiesta gave him both her slippers, and he climbed into the plane,  and she could hear him hammering. Maybe
  he wasn’t such an unfeeling  individual, after all. Pretty soon, when he brought her slippers back,  she smiled
  at him radiantly. It was calculated to melt ice, that smile;  it would have cured rheumatism in a
  ninety−year−old man.
  The smile seemed lost on Doc Savage, however, for his interest in  Fiesta became no more personal than
  before, which meant that it  remained not at all personal.
  Chapter VII. HOBO JONES MAKES A CATCH
  DOC SAVAGE and pretty Fiesta Robertson landed at Bowlegs, Arizona,  shortly after dark the following
  night. They did not come down at the  airport, but outside of town about five miles, in the desert, on an  alkali
  flat where the plane was not apt to be noticed.
  They had killed time all during the day, which Fiesta had considered  a sinful waste of valuable moments, and
  which she had mentioned. Doc  Savage, however, had not been swayed by her arguments that, if he was  going
  to do anything, he’d better be at it. This big bronze fellow,  Fiesta had discovered, contained a determined
  streak.
  Doc Savage, Fiesta had learned, contained a number of unusual  qualities, among them at least one that she
  was beginning not to care  for. He ignored her. After he had questioned her that morning, he had  spoken not
  more than a dozen words. He had simply stretched out in the  shade of the plane and, of all things, gone to
  sleep. Fiesta was  disgusted. Gentlemen didn’t usually sleep when they had Fiesta for  company.
  Ordinarily it would have been perfectly all right with Fiesta if a  gentleman had wanted to sleep, but the truth
  was, she had rarely met a  man with the personal magnetism, and the handsomeness, of this big  bronze man.
  She still had a sneaking suspicion he was scared of girls.
  Doc Savage removed a small motor scooter from the plane, a  two−wheeled go−devil of a thing, which would
  carry double.
  "You ride on back," he said, "and direct us."
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter VII. HOBO JONES MAKES A CATCH
  26
  
  "To the place surrounded by the electrified fence?" asked Fiesta.
  "No. To Bowlegs."
  "I don’t see," snapped Fiesta, "why you wasted all day."
  The bronze man did not answer�another irritating habit he possessed,  the young woman had learned�and
  went to the plane, then came back  wearing an Alpine type packsack which contained at least two metal  cases,
  similar to the case which had held the portable chemical  laboratory with which he had so quickly analyzed
  the letter from her  brother. He got on the go−devil, and started the motor.
  "Let us get going," he said.
  The scooter, for that was what the thing amounted to, made almost no  noise, Fiesta discovered. Moreover, the
  little thing was capable of  breath−taking speed, and the young woman found herself taking a ride  through the
  mesquite and sagebrush that she would always remember. She  was more than glad when the bronze man
  stopped the go−devil on a  darkened side street in town.
  Fiesta followed the bronze man. Pretty soon, she was very curious  about what he was going to do.
  THEY reached the post office, stopped at the front door, and Doc  removed one of the metal cases from his
  pack and took out a device  which resembled a small old−fashioned magic lantern. This, however, had  a black
  lens.
  "What is that thing?" asked Fiesta.
  "A portable projector of ultra−violet rays, light which is invisible  to the unaided eye. When certain chemicals,
  which include quite a few  common substances such as vaseline and aspirin, are exposed to  ultra−violet light,
  they fluoresce, or glow�in this fashion." The  bronze man turned the ultra−violet projector on the right side of
  the  front door of the post office. He moved it around a bit.
  "Goodness!" said Fiesta.
  "Every town has a post office," Doc Savage explained, "so there is a  dependable place to leave messages."
  The bronze man was referring to writing which had appeared magically  in letters of faint luminosity on the
  right side of the post−office  door. This printing, evidently put there in haste, read:
  We wasted most of day but finally got on trail of something that  looks good. Will keep in touch with you by
  radio.
  It was unsigned.
  "What on earth is that?" Fiesta asked.
  "It is writing put there with a chemical chalk which leaves a mark  invisible to the unaided eye, but readily
  distinguishable by the use of  ultra−violet light."
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter VII. HOBO JONES MAKES A CATCH
  27
  
  Fiesta began, "But�" and did not finish. Just what she would have  said was probably something about being
  mystified by the message. What  she did say rang with unexpected, astonished delight.
  "Hobo Jones!" she cried. "Look!"
  It was Hobo Jones in person, walking down the middle of the street,  with two large six−shooters slung from
  his hips. He walked in a rather  bowlegged, self−conscious way, and turned his head from one side to the
  other as he strode along, and gave all the dark shadows suspicious  glances.
  "Hobo Jones!" Fiesta ran out into the street, and embraced and  kissed the young man. "Oh, I’m so glad you’re
  safe!"
  Hobo Jones, heartily approving of the embrace, and finding the kiss  somewhat like a stroke of sweet
  lightning, began blushing furiously.  "Gosh!" he said. "Do that again�er�I mean, I’m sure glad you’re safe,
  too."
  "Where did you get the artillery?" asked Fiesta.
  Jones adjusted the six−shooters on his hips. They were not quite as  heavy as anvils.
  "Oh, I found these last night, where those fellows were chasing me  through the brush," he said. "I guess the
  belt came unbuckled, and one  of the men lost the guns in the darkness."
  "You got away all right?"
  "It turned out to be simple," said Jones. "I just outran them. Then  they left. I guess they were scared."
  "And what have you been doing since?"
  "Looking for you," explained Hobo Jones. He added grimly, "I thought  they’d taken you prisoner. Only I
  found out in town that you had left  by plane. After I learned that, I just walked around looking for them
  cusses who waylaid us. Only I was a little handicapped, because I never  got a look at their faces last night."
  Hobo Jones took a deep breath.  "How do you like it?" he asked.
  "Like what?" inquired Fiesta.
  "Why, I got a shave and haircut. Didn’t you notice?"
  Fiesta had noticed. She thought it had made a remarkable  improvement, too. Hobo Jones had a firm jaw,
  which was also nice, and  he no longer looked like a hairy ape. Distinctly not. He was handsome  in a big
  sunburned way.
  "You look swell," Fiesta admitted.
  Hobo Jones scowled. He pointed over her shoulder. "Who is the big  guy?" he asked.
  "That," said Fiesta, "is Doc Savage."
  Something in the young woman’s tone, a touch of undue admiration for  the big bronze fellow, no doubt, did
  not escape Hobo Jones’ notice.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter VII. HOBO JONES MAKES A CATCH
  28
  
  "I don’t like him," said Hobo Jones. "Already, I don’t like him."
  FIESTA remarked, "But you haven’t even met him."
  "I can postpone the pleasure," suggested Hobo Jones. 
  However, Doc Savage was advancing, and Fiesta performed the  introductions. She noticed with admiration
  the quiet self−possession of  the bronze man as he met the other fellow, and she also noted with some  pique
  that Hobo Jones did not attempt to carry the introduction off in  a sociable way.
  "What are you doing around here?" Hobo Jones asked Doc Savage  unpleasantly.
  "Mr. Savage is helping me," Fiesta explained. 
  Hobo Jones seemed injured. "I thought I was helping you," he said.
  Fiesta was not unacquainted with manifestations of jealousy in the  male breast. She recognized it now.
  "You can help me, too," she told Hobo Jones soothingly.
  "Too many cooks spoil a broth," said Jones grimly.
  "Don’t be that way," requested Fiesta.
  "I’ll be any way I want!"
  "Don’t be silly!"
  "Who’s silly?" shouted Jones.
  "Don’t yell at me!" yelled Fiesta.
  Hobo Jones hitched his six−shooters around on his hips. His face was  miserable, and long. He put out his jaw
  disgustedly.
  "All women are alike!" he said, and walked off.
  Fiesta was roiled herself, and more affected than she wanted to  admit, so by way of showing Mr. Hobo Jones
  just how small an item he  was in her life, she took Doc Savage’s arm, and looked up adoringly at  the big
  bronze man as they walked to the hotel. Not that this was hard  to do, however.
  Hobo Jones threw his hat on the ground and stamped on it. There were  holes worn in the hat, just as there
  were holes worn in his pants, his  coat and his socks.
  "Darn the luck," groaned Jones, "Fat lot of chance I’ve got. The big  rich guys always get the gals. Dang
  women, anyhow!"
  Hobo Jones picked up his hat, dusted it off, put it on, and stalked  gloomily down alleys, and finally sat for a
  while on a woodpile, where  he was barked at by a large amiable dog, which finally gave up and came  over
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter VII. HOBO JONES MAKES A CATCH
  29
  
  and licked Jones’ hand sympathetically.
  "I’ve got it!" announced Jones suddenly. "I’ll go ahead and solve  this blasted mystery by myself." He got off
  the woodpile, all enthused  with the idea. "I’ll bet then that she won’t go down the street holding  to the arms
  of big bronze guys. It’ll be my arm!"
  The father of the idea looked at the child with wondrous approval.  It was a matter of no more than three
  minutes’ brisk walk to reach a  livery stable.
  "I want to rent a saddle horse," said Hobo Jones. 
  "Three dollars," said the livery−stable man. 
  "That’s the trouble, I have no such money as that," explained Jones.  "However"�he unholstered one of his
  six−shooters and put it on the head  of the barrel that was between them�"I will pay for the rent of the  horse
  with one of these guns."
  "You’ll trade one of your guns for rent on a horse?"
  "I cannot shoot left−handed, anyway," Jones said.
  IT was in the thick darkness past midnight when Hobo Jones reined up  his horse in the neighborhood of the
  electrified fence which surrounded  the strawstack shack and a mysterious field full of yellowish  vegetables.
  Making sure his one remaining six−shooter was convenient for use,  Jones crept through the darkness. His
  goal was the same  pseudo−strawstack upon which he had bungled yesterday evening.
  He wondered if the body of the brown man was still inside.
  The cactus thorns seemed particularly sharp tonight, the mesquite  unusually thick, and there were apparently
  more of the yucca seed pods  that clattered and sounded like rattlesnakes. Some coyotes were howling  in the
  distance, sounding somewhat like a group of silly girls  giggling, and nearer at hand, there was a hoot owl
  with a deep  human−textured voice that kept making Jones uneasy.
  The first time Jones heard the groan, he thought it was the owl  trying a different note. The second time, Jones
  halted. He strained his  ears. The groan came again. Jones crept toward the sound.
  There was an open clearing. In this, a man. The man was on his back.  His arms were outflung. He was
  groaning.
  It was evident that the man’s wrists were tied by cords to pegs  which were sunk in the sand. The fellow
  groaned again.
  Jones listened. There was no sound in the night, until the  staked−out man moaned once more.
  "Poor devil!" Jones muttered.
  He rushed forward, holding his gun ready and keeping his eyes on the  surrounding sage, mesquite and cactus.
  But nothing molested him. He  stood over the staked−out man.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter VII. HOBO JONES MAKES A CATCH
  30
  
  The man on the sand was small, and dressed for a horseback canter in  Central Park, New York City, rather
  than the Arizona desert. His boots  were custom made, with mirrorlike luster, his breeches were cut with
  swank, and his brown−checkered riding jacket had that certain "umph"  which expensive custom tailors only
  get in the models that sell for  over two hundred dollars.
  Hobo Jones bent down to help the fellow.
  The staked−out man took Jones by the throat and they began having a  fight.
  Chapter VIII. FIELD EMPTY
  IT was instantly and distressingly evident that the dapper man,  while staked out in the sand, was not at all
  firmly secured, because  the stakes were barely thrust into the soft sand. The fellow grabbed  one of the stakes
  and used it on Hobo Jones’ head as they rolled over  and over. This enraged Jones. He did some pounding
  with his fists, some  clutching and twisting. He decided to break one of his opponent’s arms  immediately, and
  set himself to that task.
  "Ouch! Help!" yelled the foe. "Monk! Monk! Come quick!"
  Another man came out of the surrounding darkness. This man was  practically as wide as tall, had arms so
  long that he could almost tie  his shoes without stooping, and was unusual in other respects.  Evidently he was
  "Monk." He looked it. His mouth was astoundingly big,  his eyes amazingly small, and he was undoubtedly
  one of the homeliest  of the earth’s children. He was coated with reddish hair, any one of  these hairs looking
  as if it might be pulled and used for a rusty  shingle nail.
  "Help me, Monk!" the dapperly dressed fellow yelled at this homely  newcomer.
  Monk showed enthusiastic interest in the fight, but no intention of  helping the dapper one. In fact, Monk gave
  Hobo Jones some advice.
  "Tear his pants," Monk suggested. "Ham always hates to have his  pants torn."
  Hobo Jones tried this tactic, and it succeeded admirably.
  Monk bounced up and down gleefully. He was enjoying it
  Ham was making frantic endeavors to reach an article that lay under  a nearby bush, and he finally succeeded,
  falling upon the thing with a  glad yell. It was a cane, an innocent−looking black walking stick.  However,
  when Ham got his hands upon this, and gave the handle a twist,  it proved to be a sword cane.
  Fortunately, Hobo Jones got his chance at that moment, and gave Ham  a wallop on the jaw which laid him
  out in the sand, temporarily stunned.
  Jones looked at the homely Monk.
  "Thanks," said Jones. "Tearing his pants sure helped."
  "Don’t mention it," said Monk. "It was a good job. I want to shake  your hand."
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter VIII. FIELD EMPTY
  31
  
  Hobo Jones got up and extended his hand.
  Monk knocked Hobo Jones stiff with a fist to the jaw.
  EVENTUALLY the birds stopped singing and Hobo Jones sat up and bent  a malevolent, confused look upon
  Monk and Ham. Ham had also revived.
  "So you two clowns are working together," said Jones grimly.
  "Sure," Monk admitted.
  "You pick a hell of a way of showing it," Jones grumbled. "I thought  you were enemies."
  Monk looked at Ham as if he was inspecting a worm. Ham in turn  glowered at Monk as though the latter was
  something he was soon going  to dissect.
  "Oh, we have our little differences," Monk said airily. "But they’re  private."
  Ham ground his teeth and glared at Monk. "You persuaded me to lay  there on the sand for three hours, staked
  out like a beef."
  "You was bait for a trap," Monk said airily. "We got something in  the trap"�he pointed at Hobo
  Jones�"didn’t we? What are you kicking  about?"
  "And then you stood there and watched me getting beat up," Ham  gritted. "You even gave the beater advice."
  Monk guffawed cheerfully.
  "Sure," he said. "It was fun."
  "What are you going to do with me, you fools?" yelled Hobo Jones  angrily.
  "If you don’t stay shut up," Monk assured him, "we’re going to take  turns biffing you in the eye."
  Monk then ambled�nothing but amble described his gait�into the  surrounding mesquite, and came back
  bearing a small box which was an  apparatus�a radio transmitter−receiver, Jones decided. Monk tuned the
  device, then spoke into the microphone.
  "We got us a victim," he said. And he gave the exact location of  this spot where he and Ham were holding
  unfortunate Hobo Jones.
  Somewhat more than half an hour passed. Doc Savage appeared. He was  accompanied by Fiesta.
  "Hey," said Jones, gaping at them. "What . . . what . . . I don’t  get this."
  Doc Savage said, "I see you have met two of my assistants,  Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Monk
  Mayfair, and Brigadier General  Theodore Marley Ham Brooks."
  Hobo Jones ogled Doc Savage.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter VIII. FIELD EMPTY
  32
  
  "Your assistants," he said. "These two clowns?"
  Monk said, "I’m beginning to resent that word ‘clowns.’"
  Ham pointed at Hobo Jones. "Who is this pants tearer?"
  Doc Savage explained the status of Hobo Jones in the mystery of the  flaming birds and the patch of yellowish
  fruit, and this caused Monk  and Ham to look sheepish and groan in unison.
  "Here we went to a lot of trouble to trap him," Monk said, "and he’s  not worth anything."
  Doc Savage asked, "Have you learned anything that will shed any  light on the mystery?"
  "Nothing," Monk said. "There ain’t even no dead man inside that  strawstack, and there ain’t no field of
  yellow vegetables."
  IT was determined to go at once to the field which had contained�but  didn’t now, Monk and Ham
  insisted�the yellow vegetables. They moved  quietly, Monk and Ham in particular using more efficiency than
  was  evident. Going by surface appearances, Monk and Ham were apt to give  people headaches, or at least
  earaches, because they quarreled  interminably over any subject at hand. No one had overheard Ham speak a
  civil word to Monk, or vice versa. They acted as if they were always  ready for a hair−pulling. As a matter of
  fact, each one of them had  risked his neck to save the life of the other on an occasion or two,  which hinted
  that they were rather good, if strange, friends after all.
  Fiesta said, "Mr. Savage, I understand why you delayed all day. I’m  sorry I said some nasty things about your
  waiting. I realize now that  you had two of your men here investigating, and wanted to wait until  tonight to
  bring me, so that people wouldn’t see me and know I was  alive."
  "Alive?" said Hobo Jones. "Are you supposed to be dead?"
  "Yes," said Fiesta, and she explained about the plane that she was  supposed to have been in, and how it had
  met a weird disaster in which  one of the horror birds figured. And she dwelled�much too lengthily, in  Jones’
  opinion�on the fact that Doc Savage, with tricky foresight that  was little short of phenomenal, had saved her
  life by keeping her off  the plane. She also credited Monk and Ham with the ingenious message  left on the
  post−office door for Doc.
  Hobo Jones went into another sulk. He was glad that Fiesta was  alive. Overjoyed. But if somebody had to
  save pretty Fiesta’s life,  why�why the hell�couldn’t it have been somebody besides this big bronze  man,
  who was so handsome?
  "Damn, damn, damn!" said Jones miserably.
  Then he had something else to think about, for they found Fiesta’s  two stepladders where they had been left,
  carefully negotiated the  fence, which they then discovered was no longer electrified, and  shortly stood staring
  at the field where the yellow vegetables had been.
  Where the yellow vegetables had been was right. They were  gone.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter VIII. FIELD EMPTY
  33
  
  Chapter IX. THE ANGEL FRUITS
  "YOU see," Monk said, "the field is just empty dirt."
  He produced a flashlight and prodded the beam around by way of  emphasizing his point, and it was evident
  that the field had been swept  as clean as it possibly could be, and that the earth was soft, as if  recently dug up.
  Monk and Ham both went prowling with flashlights, but  there was not even a root.
  "But the yellow vegetables were here last night," Hobo Jones  insisted. "I bit into one. I had to take my
  pocketknife and scrape it  off my teeth."
  "I bit one, too," said Fiesta. "It was awful."
  "What did it taste like?" Doc Savage asked quietly.
  "Think of anything nasty, and you’ve got it," Fiesta explained. "I  don’t know what you would call the taste,
  exactly. Just foul."
  Doc Savage produced a flashlight of his own. He vanished in the  darkness so silently that it was ghostly, and
  when they saw his  flashlight beam dart, he was some distance away. The bronze man was  gone for all of
  thirty minutes, during which the others crouched in the  darkness and had very little to say. Hobo Jones and
  Fiesta were  thinking of the grisly skull−colored bird, and they were too uneasy for  words. Monk and Ham
  were somewhat madder at each other than usual, and  so not speaking. Doc came back.
  "Last night," he said, "a number of men came and dug up the yellow  vegetables, roots and all. The patch is
  very small, and there were  several of the men. They were the same men who waylaid Miss Fiesta and  Mr.
  Jones last night."
  "How do you know they were the same men?" asked Jones resentfully.
  "Their footprints. The men made tracks when they chased you, and  other tracks when they dug up the
  vegetables."
  Jones fell silent, reflecting that the reference to himself being  chased might be necessary, but it hardly
  reflected credit.
  "There ain’t nothing in the strawstack, neither," said Monk. "I’ll  show you."
  Monk’s bad grammar, and his manners, made him seem a homespun fellow  who might not be too long on
  mental acumen, but this was deceiving, for  Monk happened to be one of the most noted industrial chemists in
  existence at the moment. He was famous, in his own right. As, also, was  Ham Brooks, the dapper
  sword−cane carrier, who was a famous lawyer, as  erudite a disciple of Blackstone as the Harvard law school
  had ever  turned out.
  "Come on, you shyster," Monk said, by way of paying tribute to Ham’s  ability at law. "Let’s go to the
  strawstack."
  The two of them, Monk and Ham, were associated with Doc Savage in  his unusual career of righting wrongs
  and punishing evildoers, for two  reasons. First, they admired Doc. Second, they liked adventure.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter IX. THE ANGEL FRUITS
  34
  
  They reached the strawstack. They went in.
  "See," Monk said. "It’s empty."
  Only it wasn’t.
  THE man was tall, and he was thin, and he was happy. The happiness  stood out, in contrast to his long
  thinness. He was so very skinny. He  was so extremely happy. He was like a skeleton full of joy, and dressed
  in a loose gray suit, brown hat and brown shoes.
  "Oh, thank everything!" he exclaimed. "I’m glad! I’m so utterly glad  you’re here!"
  "Who are you?" asked Doc Savage.
  "Fenter Bain," said the happy thin man.
  "Fenter Bain?" said Fiesta.
  "Yes."
  "Where is my brother?" said Fiesta.
  Fenter Bain giggled. He got off the chair on which he had been  sitting and snickered happily. "I’m so
  delighted to see you," he told  everybody. "I never heard of your brother," he informed Fiesta.
  "Do you know her name?" Doc Savage asked.
  "No," said Fenter Bain.
  "Then how are you sure you do not know her brother?" the bronze man  asked curiously.
  Fenter Bain chuckled. He laughed. He rubbed his hands together as if  he had hold of molasses candy.
  "If a man of my acquaintance had a sister as pretty as this little  sweetykins," said Fenter Bain, "I would know
  about it, you bet you me."
  "Stop calling her sweetykins!" said Hobo Jones.
  "I’m happy," chortled Fenter Bain. "Excuse me, because I’m so happy."
  Monk said thoughtfully, "I think he’s crazy."
  "You and me both, brother," said Hobo Jones.
  Fenter Bain began laughing, and laughed and laughed. He did look  happy. He sat down on his chair again.
  "I’m so happy," he said, "because hell was scared out of me until  you showed up. You look like such nice
  people. Gee, I’m glad to see  you. My, but I’m full of joy."
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter IX. THE ANGEL FRUITS
  35
  
  Full of loose bolts, was Monk’s opinion, and it seemed to be shared  by the others, except for Doc Savage,
  whose metallic features had  remained inscrutable. It was rarely that Doc Savage showed what he was
  thinking. He had trained his emotions, and his face. He had trained,  for that matter, every sinew and faculty in
  his great bronze figure,  along lines laid out by scientists who had taken him from the cradle  and devoted their
  skill to making him what he was today, an amazing  combination of physical strength and mental genius,
  devoted to one aim  in life�the strange career which he was following. Two full hours each  day, without fail,
  Doc Savage devoted to his scientific exercises, and  this accounted to a great extent for his abilities.
  "You say you were scared," said Doc Savage.
  "Yes," admitted Fenter Bain, "but I am happy now."
  "What scared you?"
  "The incredible thing that happened to my field of special  muskmelons which I have spent years developing."
  Hobo Jones interrupted. "Those things were muskmelons?" he asked.
  "Yes."
  "They were the damnedest tastingest muskmelons I ever tasted,"  advised Hobo Jones.
  "Oh, but they hadn’t been perfected," explained Fenter Bain.
  Jones snorted. "Oh, that was it."
  "And now my muskmelons have all disappeared," said Fenter Bain. "Two  days ago I went to Flagstaff to see
  a rodeo, and I came back tonight,  and my poor muskmelons�everyone of them was gone. What on earth
  happened?"
  "What on earth happened is what we’d like to know," growled Jones.  "What about the naked brown man?"
  "Naked brown man?"
  "And the bird?" added Jones. "The ugly bird�that smelled."
  "The bird," said Fiesta, "that chased me, and . . . and�"
  "And seems to have caused the death of several people in a plane in  Missouri," Doc Savage finished grimly.
  "The bird that bursts into  flames."
  "I don’t know anything about birds," gasped Fenter Bain, "or naked  brown men."
  "But the naked brown man was here," Hobo Jones reminded.
  "So were my Angelfruits."
  "Angelfruits?"
  "My muskmelons," Fenter Bain explained. "I have named them  Angelfruits."
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter IX. THE ANGEL FRUITS
  36
  
  Fiesta stamped a small foot wildly. She was getting desperate, and  she had an imperative question that she
  wanted to ask.
  "Do you know Dave Robertson?" demanded Fiesta. "He is my brother."
  "Never heard of him," said Fenter Bain. "I am happy, but this is all  very mystifying to me."
  "It’s mystifying to several of us," Monk muttered.
  "To me," said Hobo Jones, "it’s plain spatterpated. It couldn’t  happen."
  HANDICAPPED by the proclivity of the skeleton−thin Fenter Bain to  shout that he was happy at least once
  each twenty seconds, they  conducted an inquiry. The inquisition brought them back out of the same  rat hole
  by which they entered; at the end, they knew exactly as much  as when they started. Fenter Bain liked privacy,
  and he had built the  electrified fence, and the shack disguised as a strawstack, and he had  been raising a tiny
  field of vegetable which he insisted was a special  muskmelon, not quite developed for market as yet, it was
  true. He had  gone off to the rodeo at Flagstaff, and had come back tonight, and it  was all a blooming, infernal
  mystery to him, and was he happy!
  Doc Savage, Monk and Ham conducted a thorough search of the  vicinity, leaving Fiesta in charge of Hobo
  Jones, which was strictly  all right with Hobo, because he felt that he had been losing ground  fast with the
  young lady. He was very nice to her, trying to catch up.
  Doc and his two assistants found several minor parts of the jigsaw  which they fitted into the picture,
  principally airplane  tracks�evidence that one very large airplane had landed a great number  of times on a flat
  near the electrified fence during the day. There  were also tracks which showed indisputably that the
  "muskmelons,"  plants and fruit, had been carried to this plane and put aboard. Also,  there was a large
  collection of tracks made by barefooted men, and the  tracks were different in size, indicating that there had
  been more than  one brown naked man in the vicinity. Altogether, however, their finds  didn’t help much.
  Monk and Ham led Doc to the small, fast plane via which they had  come from New York City. They did not
  want to show Doc the plane,  because he had seen it before; their idea was to free their two pets,  Habeas
  Corpus and Chemistry, which they had locked in the plane.
  The pets, Habeas Corpus and Chemistry, were as unusual as their  owners. Habeas Corpus was a pig with long
  legs, ears that might have  been built for wings, an inquisitive snout, and a disposition to  dislike Ham.
  Chemistry was a small ape of unknown species�Monk always  insisted Chemistry was a what−is−it�and the
  animal bore a striking  resemblance, in miniature, to Monk Mayfair, the eminent chemist,  himself. Chemistry
  did not like Monk, and the feelings were  reciprocated.
  Monk and Ham invariably took these two oddly assorted pets along,  making some of Doc Savage’s
  expeditions into adventure resemble a  circus getting under way. Looks, however, were again deceiving. The
  two  pets had their uses�in addition to the apparent one of affording Monk  and Ham something to squabble
  about when they couldn’t find anything  else. Doc Savage frequently found use for both animals. As for the
  circus aspect of the bronze man’s expeditions, there was seldom  anything organized that was more efficient.
  Trailed by Habeas Corpus and Chemistry, Monk and Ham and Doc Savage  returned to the point where they
  had left Fenter Bain, Hobo Jones and  Fiesta. Monk had been cogitating, and he had formed an opinion, which
  he now got off his chest.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter IX. THE ANGEL FRUITS
  37
  
  "What do you make of this Fenter Bain, you shyster?" Monk asked Ham.
  "I hardly know, you ignorant baboon," Ham replied in the same  spirit. "But I have qualms."
  "I didn’t know a lawyer ever had those," said Monk.
  Ham ignored this. He rubbed his jaw. "You know," he said, "I think  the guy is a little touched in the head. I
  think he should be confined  in a hospital for examination."
  "Good idea," said Monk.
  "Excellent idea," said Ham. "We can confine you at the same time."
  The net result of this was that a decision was reached to put Fenter  Bain in a hospital in Bowlegs and observe
  him, to ascertain just what  was wrong with him. The man felt too happy.
  This decision concerning Fenter Bain was unfortunate.
  Chapter X. THE SLY MAN
  FENTER BAIN astonished everyone by his attitude toward entering the  hospital.
  "I’ll be happy, so happy, to do so," he said. "To tell the truth, I  feel rather wan."
  He looked rather wan, too, after they got him on a bed in the  hospital. In fact, when he closed his eyes, he
  bore a macabre  resemblance to a man who was already dead, and since he began breathing  with long rattling
  sighs, he was the picture of a man who needed to be  in a hospital.
  "Oh, I’m sorry," said Fiesta sympathetically.
  "I’m glad, I’m very glad," mumbled Fenter Bain. He opened his eyes.  "I am full of joy. Will you come and
  see me soon, and bring me flowers,  and some candy? All−day suckers. I like all−day suckers."
  "Of course I’ll bring you all−day suckers," Fiesta assured him, and  gave his bony hand a comforting squeeze.
  Poor demented man, she thought.
  Hobo Jones noted the squeeze, and found that he was enraged, and it  occurred to him to be a little disgusted
  with himself. Jealous of an  old bag of bones like that? He was getting so he was jealous of  everybody, wasn’t
  he? This big bronze guy, Doc Savage, was the one to  watch. And maybe that overdressed shyster of a lawyer,
  too�he had been  smirking at Fiesta, in what Jones considered a sickening way, although  Fiesta hadn’t seemed
  to mind. And that Monk, too�the homely  gorilla!�had a way with the girls, it appeared. Monk’s system
  seemed to  be to get the young ladies interested in his pet pig, Habeas Corpus,  then use ventriloquism and
  make it appear that the pig was talking.  Fiesta thought it was cute. Hobo Jones thought it was nauseating.
  "Of course," Fiesta told Fenter Bain again, "I’ll bring you some  candy. This very morning."
  There did not seem to be much that the party could do, not until  daylight at least, so they repaired to the hotel
  and got some sleep.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter X. THE SLY MAN
  38
  
  Fiesta arose early, remembered her promise to take Fenter Bain some  candy, including all−day suckers, so
  she proceeded to do this, leaving  the hotel, and stopping at a candy store en route to the hospital.
  Fenter Bain’s room was on the first floor of the hospital. The  window was open. Fenter Bain, a pitifully thin
  skeleton of a figure,  caused Fiesta’s heart to give a jerk of sympathy.
  "Are you happy this morning, Mr. Bain?" she asked.
  "So happy," Fenter Bain assured her. He peered, as interested as a  little boy, at the sack of candy she had
  brought. "What have you there,  sweetykins?"
  "The candy you wanted."
  "Didn’t anyone else think enough of me to come?"
  "I came early," said Fiesta. "I don’t think the others were out of  bed yet."
  "You’re alone?"
  "Yes."
  "Come here, sweetykins, and let’s see what kind of candy you brought  an old man," said Fenter Bain.
  Fiesta came close, after which she was grabbed around the neck,  choked into silence, and given a blow on the
  jaw which induced  unconsciousness.
  "Damn me!" snarled Fenter Bain. "I was getting tired of being happy!"
  THE fact that the hour of the morning was very early, hence few  persons were about, made it comparatively
  simple for Fenter Bain to  drop out of the hospital window, carrying Fiesta over his shoulder, and  dash into
  the cover of the tall sagebrush.
  For a pretended physical wreck, Fenter Bain proved strong and of  good durability. He ran a full mile, with
  Fiesta across his shoulder,  stopping only once to pop her one on the jaw again and quiet her, and  he was
  hardly puffing at the end.
  There was an adobe hut. Four men came out. Three were brown men with  black teeth, and they wore nothing
  but breechcloths. The fourth was  white, a large man, with a hideous purple birthmark on his neck. They
  looked at Fenter Bain.
  "You’ve got that Robertson girl," one of them said.
  "Yes," agreed Fenter Bain. "And a very nice job of getting I did,  too. I just acted so happy it didn’t look right,
  and pretty soon�bingo!  I had the girl."
  "And why?"
  "Her brother," said Fenter Bain, "is becoming harder and harder to  force to work for us. By threatening to do
  harm to his sister, we may  be able to instill a little more industry into him."
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter X. THE SLY MAN
  39
  
  "We would have to take her to Indo−China to do that effectively,"  said the brown man, who spoke a good
  grade of the English language.
  "Exactly."
  "But�"
  "We are taking her to Indo−China right away!" snapped Fenter Bain.
  The other man, evidently a philosopher at heart, shrugged and spread  his arms wide, then spat a stream of
  betel juice�it was the betel that  made his own teeth, and those of his fellows, so black�at an  inoffensive
  lizard near by. "The ways of white−skinned men pass all  understanding," he remarked. "They are like white
  cows�one never knows  when they will have a black calf."
  Fenter Bain ignored the remark, and smacked one bony palm with a  fist.
  "We’re damn lucky to have our necks whole," he said. "You know that  very well. You are very calm now,
  but last night, when the death of the  flaming falcon got one of you, the rest of you all ran for your lives.  You
  deserted me."
  "You fled also," one pointed out.
  Fenter Bain shrugged and spread his arms. "There is nothing for us  to do but go back to Indo−China. All of
  our plans here in the United  States have been wiped out. The moment the death of the flaming falcon  came,
  and our enemies managed to remove every last plant from that  field, we were ruined. We will have to start all
  over again. So we are  going back to Indo−China, and we will take this girl, because she will  be a very
  convenient club to use over her brother."
  "What about Doc Savage?" a dark−brown man asked. "Even in  Indo−China, I have heard of that fellow. It is
  said that the tigers go  hungry all the time, from hiding in their caves, when he is in the  jungle."
  "Hah!" said Fenter Bain. "Doc Savage does not know what it is all  about."
  TWENTY minutes later, a car pulled onto the flying field at Bowlegs,  Arizona, choosing the exact minute
  when a large and fast airliner was  sitting, fueled ready for a take−off, and with the engines running  slowly.
  The pilot was standing beside the steps talking to the copilot,  and the stewardess was in the administration
  building seeing about  something or other.
  Out of the car sprang Fenter Bain and his brown men dressed in  breechcloths. Two of these held Fiesta; the
  others held rifles. They  aimed, and fired a volley.
  The pilot and copilot of the plane fell, shot through the legs.
  The brown−skinned men began shooting lazily as they made their way  to the plane. They broke the window
  over the head of a staring  lunchroom waiter, and they knocked up dust all around a mechanic,  sending the
  frightened greaseball racing into the adjacent sagebrush.
  Fenter Bain climbed into the plane. The others started to follow.  Suddenly Fenter Bain shouted angrily.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter X. THE SLY MAN
  40
  
  "Hell, there’s no map to Canada in this plane!" he yelled.
  "Get a map to Canada! Go make ‘em give you one!"
  Four of the breechclothed riflemen made a flying wedge and raced to  the administration building, found the
  door locked, shot out the lock,  stamped inside, fired numerous bullets into walls and ceiling, and  profanely
  demanded and received an aëronautical chart showing the route  to Canada.
  After staging these wild−West fireworks, Fenter Bain and his men  took off, and headed northward toward
  Canada. Over the wild Painted  Desert country, however, they turned west toward San Francisco.
  There had been no intention at any time of flying to Canada. The  commotion to secure a map to Canada had
  been a flourish of misdirection.
  "Good job of fooling ‘em," Fenter Bain decided.
  "It is too bad," one of the brown fellows remarked, "that we had to  steal a plane, and make such an uproar."
  "What else could we do? Our enemies took our own plane, and even if  they had left it, we would have been
  afraid to use it, fearing the  death of the flaming falcon."
  The others nodded. That was logical.
  There was plenty of fuel in the tanks, the motors ran like watches,  Fenter Bain was an expert flier, and
  everything was rosy. They  encountered a great mass of clouds that seemed to cover the entire  western part of
  the United States, and that made it perfect. They flew  high. No one on the ground had a possible chance of
  seeing the plane  and identifying it. They were careful to keep the radio off the air, so  that it could not be
  spotted with a direction−finder.
  "Doc Savage," said Fenter Bain, "hasn’t a chance of trailing us."
  THAT afternoon, they came down on a small, deserted stretch of beach  north of San Francisco. No one saw
  them. Fenter Bain’s men alighted,  carrying Fiesta Robertson. Fenter Bain himself remained in the pilot’s
  cockpit, busy lashing the controls, and when he got them fixed to his  satisfaction, he jerked the throttles open,
  dashed back to the door and  leaped out of the plane just as it was picking up speed.
  The plane ran bawling down the beach, lifted a few yards, and raced  out to sea. Very slowly, it turned over on
  one wing, sideslipped and  plunged into the sea. It sank. Approximately a hundred and seventy−five  thousand
  dollars’ worth of plane disappeared beneath the ocean waves.
  "Too bad," remarked Fenter Bain, "but necessary."
  He joined his men on the beach, said, "I will go rent a car. Stay  out of sight." He took his departure.
  He was back in about three hours�it had been a hard walk to the  nearest town�with a rented sedan, into
  which all of them piled after  dressing in the civilian clothing he brought them. They drove toward  San
  Francisco at a leisurely pace, leisurely because they did not want  to enter the city until after dark. Everything
  had been going perfectly  to plan, and they saw no sense in taking chances. Anyway, it was  Saturday night,
  and the steamship ticket offices would be open.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter X. THE SLY MAN
  41
  
  At one of the steamship ticket offices, Fenter Bain bought tickets  on a boat sailing that midnight�only four
  hours’ time away�for himself  and all his men. But not for Fiesta Robertson.
  They took Fiesta aboard in a large trunk, which they also purchased.  Fiesta was drugged. They had engaged a
  suite of rooms, all connecting,  for themselves, and they had the trunk delivered to this suite. As soon  as the
  trunk arrived, they opened it to ascertain that Fiesta was all  right. She seemed to be.
  "Good," said Fenter Bain.
  He and his men were too cunning to go out on deck and watch sailing  preparations. There were a number of
  dark−skinned persons on this  liner, which was a large one bound for the Orient, but they still did  not think it
  advisable to take the slightest chances.
  There was nothing of particular interest about a liner sailing,  anyway, they figured. See one, and you’ve seen
  them all.
  "Yes, indeed," said Fenter Bain. "Doc Savage will never be able to  trail us."
  Chapter XI. PACIFIC TROUBLE
  THERE might not have been anything of particular interest about the  sailing of this liner, but there was at
  least one unusual incident.  This was the incident of the man who seemed to be hard of hearing. At  least, he
  wore a small telephone receiver tucked over one ear, the cord  from which extended into a small box which he
  wore slung over a  shoulder.
  The hard−of−hearing man seemed to be a harmless soul. His behavior  was a bit aimless.
  Shortly before sailing time, he got off the ship in a hurry, raced  wildly to a telephone, and put in a
  long−distance call. While he waited  for the call to be completed, he stared through the window of the
  telephone booth and watched the liner back out of its slip and sail out  toward the Golden Gate and the far
  reaches of the Pacific Ocean.
  "Damn the luck!" groaned the man. "Why did I have to find it so  late!"
  The telephone girls were having some trouble putting the man’s call  through�they got a line as far as
  Bowlegs, Arizona, without much  difficulty, but it seemed the party in Bowlegs did not answer, because  the
  telephone receiver was off the hook.
  Monk Mayfair, in fact, had just a few moments before knocked over  the telephone with a book. He had
  intended the book to knock the ears  off Chemistry, Ham’s pet ape.
  Chemistry had collected a colony of fleas the night before in the  Arizona desert. However, Chemistry had
  been catching the fleas, one or  two at a time, and putting them on Habeas Corpus, Monk’s pet pig, and  this
  was what Monk resented.
  "You taught that blasted what−is−it to do that!" Monk yelled at Ham.
  "I did not," Ham said coolly. "Chemistry is just returning the fleas  to what is obviously their natural habitat."
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XI. PACIFIC TROUBLE
  42
  
  Hobo Jones stood up and waved his arms. He had listened to these two  squabble all day and far into the night,
  and he was getting tired of  it. Jones was on edge.
  "Shut up!" he shrieked. "You fools! Why do you sit here? Why don’t  you find Fiesta?"
  "Listen, my arm−waving friend," said Monk, "nobody is more anxious  to find Fiesta than I am."
  Jones did not like the tone of this, either.
  Monk started to say something else, but leaned over instead, and  eyed Chemistry. "Can this here what−is−it
  purr?" he asked.
  "Purr?" Ham was puzzled.
  "Sure. I heard something. It sounded like Chemistry was purring like  a cat."
  Doc Savage, who had said very little for some hours�the big bronze  man had learned that there was nothing
  to do but preserve a weary  silence during the prolonged verbal gymnastics of Monk and Ham�got up  from
  the chair where he had been seated. He picked up the telephone. It  was the buzzing of the telephone, receiver
  off, which Monk had heard.
  "Hello," Doc said. He listened a long time. Twice, he said, "Yes,"  and then he added, "Thank you, we will
  take care of the rest by radio,"  and hung up.
  "Who was that?" Monk asked.
  "One of our secret agents in San Francisco," Doc Savage explained.
  THE organization used by Doc Savage in his strange profession was  not composed alone of his small group
  of personal assistants, of which  he had five�of the five, only Monk and Ham were on this adventure, the
  others being in Europe, at work in their respective professions, one  being an engineer, another an electrical
  wizard, and the third an  archaeologist and geologist.
  Doc Savage also maintained a far−flung organization of part−time  agents upon whom he could call in
  emergencies. This part−time secret  organization had arisen as a result of another of the bronze man’s  unusual
  projects�a "college" for curing criminals of being criminals.  This "college" was itself unique, and its
  existence known to only a  few. It was located in a remote up−State section of New York, and  operated by
  specialists whom Doc Savage himself had trained. To it, Doc  sent such crooks as he captured in the course of
  his activities. The  criminals underwent intricate brain operations which wiped out all  memory of the past,
  after which they were subjected to a course of  training, a part of which was a thorough ingraining of a hate
  for  crime. The "students" were also taught trades.
  When released from this "college," the criminals had no recollection  of ever having followed crime, they
  knew a good trade, they hated crime  for what it was, and they felt that they owed Doc Savage a debt of
  gratitude. It was upon these "graduates" that Doc Savage frequently  called. They had scattered to the far
  corners of the earth, which made  it convenient.
  When Doc Savage, Monk and Ham started for their planes, Hobo Jones  began following them, and Monk
  turned around and stuck out his jaw.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XI. PACIFIC TROUBLE
  43
  
  "You don’t need to go," Monk said.
  Hobo Jones began rolling up his sleeves. "I’m going to fight  somebody," he announced grimly, "if I don’t get
  to go along. The girl I  love is in danger. I think that gives me rights."
  There was such genuine misery on Jones’ face that Monk relented.  They all rode in Doc Savage’s personal
  plane, because it was much  faster than the craft which Monk and Ham had employed for the trip from  New
  York. The ship took off after a short run, and Doc cranked the  landing wheels into the streamlined fuselage,
  and cut the motor  exhausts out of the silencers, so that no fraction of power would be  lost. He set a course for
  San Francisco.
  Hobo Jones grumbled. "Answer me this: Those fellows might have  planned to take a ship from anywhere in
  the United States or Canada, or  even take a transoceanic airliner out of the country. How did you  happen to
  hit on San Francisco, and that particular ship?"
  Doc Savage explained the point.
  "There was more than one of my agents at work," he said. "There were  scores of them, in fact. They were
  covering every ship that sailed, and  every plane that left the country. It was a long chance, but there was  a
  possibility of success. For that matter, other agents were watching  all the airports, the railways, and hotels,
  seeking a man of Fenter  Bain’s description, who would probably be accompanied by some brown  natives of
  Indo−China."
  "The way I get this," put in Monk, "we seem to be fighting two  different groups of enemies."
  "Exactly," Doc agreed. "And those two are in turn fighting each  other."
  "HOW do you figure we’ve got two distinct sets of enemies?" demanded  Jones.
  "Fenter Bain and his brown natives were obviously growing that patch  of strange yellow vegetables in the
  greatest of secrecy," Doc pointed  out.
  "Yeah."
  "And another group of men made a raid, caused the death of one of  Fenter Bain’s natives and removed the
  whole field of mysterious  vegetables bodily," Doc continued. "When Fenter Bain found this out, he  fled for
  Indo−China with his natives, taking Fiesta with him."
  "Speaking of the death of Fenter Bain’s native," said Jones, "what  about that? What about the witch’s
  chicken? That hell−horror of a bird?"
  Doc Savage seemed not to hear the inquiry, which was another of his  traits. The bronze man, as those who
  came in contact with him soon  learned, rarely voiced a theory; only what were in his own mind proven  facts.
  Rather than make evasive answers, or indulge in a long argument  about what might or might not be the facts,
  he simply became deaf to  inquiries.
  "Oh, all right," grumbled Jones. "But how did your agent find out  Fiesta was on that boat in Frisco?"
  Doc said, "Shortly after I met Fiesta, she had the misfortune to  break the heel off one of her slippers."
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XI. PACIFIC TROUBLE
  44
  
  "What’s Fiesta breaking a heel off her slipper got to do with it?"
  "I repaired it. Under the pretense of making sure both heels were  secure, I got both her slippers. In the heel of
  each of them, I  inserted a pellet of radioactive mineral. Very strong radioactive  mineral, as strong as it was
  safe to use, because too strong a material  might burn her."
  "And?"
  "My agents," the bronze man explained, "simply used a sensitive  electrical detector which would indicate the
  presence of any  radioactive material in the neighborhood. When the agent walking along  the deck of the liner
  in San Francisco located radium emanations with  his instrument, he immediately made sure they came from a
  suite of  cabins. A commercial shipment of radium, which would give out similar  emanations, would logically
  be in the ship’s safe, and not in a cabin.  Moreover, the men in the suite from which the radium emanations
  came  had booked passage hurriedly, at the last minute, and were staying  inside while the ship sailed. Now, no
  ocean traveler, however  experienced, is likely to stay inside when the ship first sails. There  is something
  fascinating about sailing time that always draws them out  on deck."
  Hobo Jones leaned back. His face was strange. He was awed,  astounded, and his heart was going downstairs
  in a series of sinking  bumps. This big man of bronze, Doc Savage, had an amazing mind, and a  breathtaking
  way of doing things on a large scale. If it became a  matter of rivalry for pretty Fiesta between a man of such
  capabilities,  and Hobo Jones, who didn’t have a nickel in the world, it was likely to  be just too bad. Jones felt
  slightly ill.
  THE liner which had sailed from San Francisco for the Orient had  been out of harbor two hours, when it
  suddenly turned about and headed  back for the Golden Gate. Fenter Bain noticed the listing of the ship  as it
  turned; he peered out of a porthole at the stars�he was a skilled  celestial navigator�and he realized what had
  happened. Alarm seized him.
  He called a steward, demanded, "Why are we turning back?"
  "There has been a breakdown in the engine room, the captain says,"  replied the steward.
  Bain swore. "You mean we’ll have to take a different ship?"
  "Oh, no," said the steward. "The broken part will be waiting for us  in San Francisco, and will be put aboard,
  and we will sail again  immediately."
  Fenter Bain, of suspicious nature, was not entirely satisfied. "This  seems like a stinker to me," he muttered.
  "It’s queer."
  The liner returned to port, was warped alongside its pier by tugs,  and Fenter Bain was on deck, watching
  suspiciously over the rail.
  "If anybody comes aboard that looks the least bit like Doc Savage or  his men," growled Fenter Bain, "we’ll
  have to make a break for safety."
  But nobody at all got aboard, as far as they could tell. The  gangplank was not even put ashore, in fact. A big
  cargo sling, a net of  rope on the end of a steel cable, swung out, and a big box was loaded  into this, lifted
  aboard, and lowered into the aft hold. This, Fenter  Bain thought, held the replacement for the piece of
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XI. PACIFIC TROUBLE
  45
  
  machinery that had  broken.
  "False alarm," he concluded. "We’re perfectly safe."
  Chapter XII. A FALCON HUNTING
  ONCE the big packing case was lowered into the hold, there was some  fast work. Doc Savage knocked a
  plank out of the side of the case, got  out, and Monk, Ham and Hobo Jones trailed him, also the two animals,
  Habeas and Chemistry. They hauled out several metal boxes of the type  which the bronze man used to
  transport the scientific devices which he  frequently had occasion to use.
  A large piece of machinery, which was all in readiness in the hold  for this purpose, was now inserted in the
  case, and the thing was  nailed up again.
  The placing of machinery in the case was merely a thorough  additional precaution on the part of the bronze
  man, and not fruitless.  For Fenter Bain, still being bitten by the bugs of suspicion, turned up  in the hold
  before long. He looked at the case, which was slowly being  opened again. He saw the machinery inside. He
  was satisfied, and went  back to his suite of cabins.
  "Let’s grab ‘im now!" Monk breathed. "Why wait?"
  "Let him lead us," Doc Savage suggested, "to the seat of this  mystery�and to Dave Robertson, Fiesta’s
  brother. Part of our job is to  find Dave Robertson, you know."
  Monk admitted that was true.
  They went to interview the captain, a grizzled soul with a weathered  face, and no little respect for Doc
  Savage.
  "I hope I carried the dang business off like you wanted," said the  captain. "On account of having to do
  everything accordin’ to them radio  messages you sent, I thought maybe there might be a slip."
  "Everything was perfect," Doc Savage assured him. "We are very  grateful."
  "Anything else you want?"
  "No. Simply keep it from being known that we are aboard."
  "Very good, sir."
  The entire willingness of a liner captain to bring his ship back to  port and pick them up in a secretive fashion
  impressed Hobo Jones. "How  come?" he wanted to know of Ham Brooks.
  "Well, it’s simple," Ham explained. "Doc Savage happens to own part  of this steamship line and several
  others. A year or two ago, when  unscrupulous foreign competition was about to break the steamship lines
  financially, Doc invested some of his money, and some of his time, and  put them on a paying basis."
  "Ugh!" said Jones. "So he’s a rich man, too?"
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XII. A FALCON HUNTING
  46
  
  "Yes," said Ham. "Doc has a secret source of fabulous wealth in�"
  "Shut up, you shyster!" interrupted Monk.
  Ham became silent, and also red−necked. For one of the few occasions  in his life, he had almost made a slip
  of the tongue. He had nearly  revealed the secret of the incredible lode of gold, in a hidden valley  deep in the
  mountains of a remote Central American country, which was  watched over by a small group of descendants
  of the ancient Mayan race.  It was from this hoard that Doc Savage secured the funds with which he  carried on
  his work of assistance�it was solely with the understanding  that he would use the money to help humanity
  that he had access to the  gold. Whenever the bronze man needed money, he had only to broadcast by  radio,
  on a certain wave length, at a certain hour each seventh day, a  few words in the almost unknown language of
  ancient Maya. A few days  later, a mule train laden with raw gold would appear mysteriously out  of the
  mountains, and the funds would be deposited to the bronze man’s  credit in the capitol of the Central
  American country.
  THE ship sailed from San Francisco the second time, plowed out  across the Pacific, encountering perfect
  weather, and the voyage  settled down to one of infinite monotony. Four days passed. On the  fifth day out,
  something unexpected happened.
  Doc Savage and his men were occupying secluded cabins, and naturally  they had not been seen about the
  decks. The captain knocked on Doc’s  door that fifth day.
  "Something rather unusual has happened," the captain advised. "A  man, one of my passengers, has been
  making frantic attempts to get in  touch with you, Mr. Savage. Here are some of the radiograms he has  sent."
  The captain spread a sheaf of sent radio messages on the stateroom  table. Doc examined them. They were
  addressed mostly to New York,  although some of them had gone to Europe to the three Doc Savage aids  who
  were not on this present adventure. All the radiograms were  beseeching attempts to find Doc Savage. All
  were signed with the name:  Court Tottingham.
  Monk growled, "Probably a trick by Fenter Bain to find I out just  where Doc Savage is."
  Doc asked, "What does this Court Tottingham look like?"
  "He is a very large, robust young man with a deep voice," the  captain explained. "And he talks with a heavy
  English accent. An accent  so thick you could cut it with a knife, as they say."
  This did not sound like Fenter Bain, who resembled a skeleton more  than anything else. Doc Savage
  considered the problem, and put it up to  his men. Should they, or should they not, see the unknown Court
  Tottingham, who might have an entirely different problem which he  wanted them to take on. The monotony
  of the past four days of ocean  voyaging influenced their decision.
  "Send Court Tottingham down," Doc directed.
  Court Tottingham was large, but not as much so as Doc Savage. He was  well−muscled, but his sinews were
  the polo type; they didn’t appear to  have been put on by hard work.
  "Really, old fellow, you have no ideah," he said. "I jolly well  nev−vah dreamed you were on this boat."
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XII. A FALCON HUNTING
  47
  
  As the captain had said, the man had an accent thick enough to chop  with a hatchet.
  Doc gave him a chair and an ash tray for the gold−tipped cigarette  which he smoked in the end of a long
  holder, and Court Tottingham sat  down. Ham surveyed the newcomer’s clothing with interest; Ham was an
  expert on male garb, and their visitor was wearing some of the best.
  "What is your problem?" Doc asked.
  "A quite extr’ordinary one."
  "Let’s have it," Doc requested.
  "You may jolly well think I am pipped, you know. But the fact is, I  am being troubled with a bird."
  "A bird?" gasped Monk.
  "A deuced bird," admitted Court Tottingham. "A very much drafted  unusual bird, if I may say so
  additionally. It is as large as�well, as  small sheep. It is about the color of a sheep, as well. But it has none  of
  the other characteristics of a sheep. Oh, decidedly not. By Jove,  it’s quite horrible, in fact."
  Monk and Ham looked at each other, at Doc, at Hobo Jones, then at  Court Tottingham. Here was that bird
  again.
  THERE was startled silence in the cabin, except for the faint  vibration of some fitting due to the pulsation of
  the ship’s engines,  and the ever−present rushing of the sea water past the hull, which came  in through the
  open porthole.
  Monk said, "So you’re being haunted by a bird?"
  "Quite. Oh, quite," the other declared.
  "What happens?"
  "Three times, I have been pursued by the dratted horror. Twice on  the open deck, late at night. And once
  down the corridor. I assure you,  it was infernally alarming."
  "You ran from it?"
  Court Tottingham nodded with dignity. "I think it shows no lack of  courage on my part, however. You should
  see the grisly thing, you  really should."
  Doc Savage asked, "And what do you think is the significance of  this?"
  "I am bound for Indo−China," said Court Tottingham.
  "And�"
  "Have you ever heard of the death by the flaming falcon?" asked  Tottingham grimly.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XII. A FALCON HUNTING
  48
  
  Doc Savage shook his head. "No, never."
  "Well, I confess I’m a bit disappointed. I had jolly well been led  to believe that you knew just about
  everything. However, this matter of  the flaming falcon has hitherto been confined to the interior of
  Indo−China, so that might explain your lack of knowledge."
  "What can you tell us about this flaming falcon thing?" the bronze  man inquired.
  "Very little, oh, very. Just native talk, a part of which is always  superstitious muttering, as you know. It
  seems there is a ruined  city�there are several ruins in the jungle there, you know�and anyone  who takes
  anything from the place is pursued by one of these hideous  falcons, and slain, and after the death, the falcon
  always vanishes in  flame. Silly, isn’t it? I put no stock in it. Until�well, I’m beginning  to wonder."
  Monk entered the discussion. "Why should this witch’s chicken chase  you?" asked Monk. "Have you got
  something from this ruined city?"
  "Ah, well, in fact, I have," admitted Tottingham.
  "What?"
  "This." He produced a picture, which he passed over to them for  inspection.
  It was a photograph. It showed a typical example of one of the  mysterious ruined cities in the jungles of that
  part of Asia, one of  the ruins which, incidentally, a motion−picture photographer had  depicted a number of
  years before in a travel film, with some financial  success.
  "I took this myself," Court Tottingham exclaimed. "I am an�ah,  adventuring photographer, I fancy you would
  say. I took this picture.  That was all. I removed nothing from the city. Not because I was afraid  of this dratted
  superstition, you understand, but because my native  porters were."
  "Did you make a movie of one of those cities a few years back?" Monk  asked.
  "Oh, no, indeed. That was an American chap. Rather poorly done, his  film was, too. Rather crude chaps,
  these Americans. That is�ah�some of  them."
  Monk, not caring for the remark, looked at his own large, hairy  fists. "Crude," he advised, "but effective."
  Tottingham spoke quickly. "I didn’t know," he said, "that a picture  would be classed as removing something
  from the ruined city. But I  guess it is. Because the dratted bird is after me."
  "What do you wish us to do?" Doc Savage inquired.
  "Well, hunt the bird. I imagine you will find it near my stateroom.  The dratted beggar seems to have taken to
  roosting around there."  Tottingham looked uncomfortable. "And if you don’t mind, it would help  my peace of
  mind if some of you escorted me, as sort of a guard, to my  cabin."
  This was done, and nothing happened en route. At the door of his  cabin, Tottingham thanked them effusively,
  and they promised to take  steps to watch for the horror bird.
  Court Tottingham closed his cabin door, and was alone.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XII. A FALCON HUNTING
  49
  
  "I put that over nicely," he remarked to himself.
  DOC SAVAGE and his companions returned to their own suite of cabins.  Hobo Jones was walking with his
  chest out. He had something on his  mind, something that caused him to be proud of himself.
  "You know what?" he said.
  "What?" Monk asked.
  "You do−everything−just−right guys got something put over on you,"  advised Hobo Jones.
  "How do you mean?" Monk demanded.
  Doc Savage spoke quietly.
  "He means," the bronze man explained, "that our late visitor, Court  Tottingham, is the leader of the gang that
  waylaid him and Miss Fiesta  on the Arizona desert that night, and also Tottingham is the fellow who  had
  charge of carrying off that field of yellow vegetables."
  Hobo Jones looked as if he had been kicked in the stomach. He sat  down. His jaw drooped.
  "How’d you know that?" he demanded. "I only knew because I  recognized the guy’s deep voice."
  Doc Savage smiled, which was a rare thing for him to do, and  confessed, "I merely guessed. From your
  manner, I knew he was obviously  someone connected with this mystery, and the guess I made seemed the
  most reasonable one."
  Jones looked a little more cheerful, and finally grinned himself.
  "I guess I’m in too fast company," he confessed. "Say, what do you  figure was the guy’s idea?"
  "Trap," Doc said.
  "Eh?"
  "He was probably setting a trap, and getting a line on how much we  knew."
  The bronze man turned the picture which Tottingham had given him�he  still had it, Tottingham having
  neglected to ask for it�and looked at  the back of the print. Drawn thereon was a small map of the interior of
  Indo−China, and on the map a cross, marked, "Location of ruined  city."
  "It’s funny," Jones remarked, "that he would give us the location of  the ruins."
  "It’ll be a lot funnier," Monk opined, "if that is the genuine ruin,  the one where Dave Robertson is being held,
  if he’s being held in a  ruin."
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XII. A FALCON HUNTING
  50
  
  Chapter XIII. TRICKS AND TRAPS
  SOMEWHAT inexplicably, and to the astonishment of everyone, and to  the disgust of Monk and Ham and
  Hobo Jones, who were craving action,  nothing whatever happened for exactly a week. There was no horror
  bird.  There were no mysterious events.
  Doc checked the small map on the back of Court Tottingham’s ruined  photograph with the charts of the
  Indo−China interior, and the thing  seemed to be genuine, which did nothing but further mystify them.
  It was true that Monk, Ham and Jones suspected that Doc Savage had  formed a theory that would explain
  Court Tottingham’s objective in  giving them the picture, but the bronze man showed his characteristic
  reticence about discussing theories that were not proven facts, and  said nothing on the point.
  Seven days passed and they were undisturbed, and on the eighth day,  which was the thirteenth after departure
  from San Francisco, they  neared the Oriental port which was the destination of the liner. That  thirteen−day
  business got under Monk’s skin. The homely chemist was a  trifle superstitious, a fact with which Ham was
  acquainted.
  That morning, Monk found that Habeas Corpus, in trying to make a  nest in a corner of the cabin, had made
  exactly thirteen scratches on  the varnished woodwork. When he opened his bag to shave, he found his  mirror
  to be broken. A little later, the ship’s cat, which was black,  walked into the stateroom and crossed Monk’s
  path.
  "Blast you!" Monk told Ham. "You’re responsible for this. You’re  trying to hoodoo me."
  "Hoodoo you?" Ham snorted. "My homely fellow, you were hoodooed at  birth. You are a hoodoo."
  The liner pulled into the mouth of the harbor, then dropped anchor,  and waited for the pilot. Things did not
  move too efficiently in the  Orient. It was early morning, but very dark. The air was warm, dankly  oppressive.
  Court Tottingham came into Doc’s suite. Tottingham wore a loud  blue−and−gray checkered coat, emphatic
  blue sport trousers, a  midnight−blue shirt, and blue sport shoes. To a connoisseur of  clothing, he was
  probably the last word, but Monk disgustedly curled  what upper lip he had.
  "I am worried," Tottingham confessed. "If you do not mind, I think I  shall go to my cabin, get my bags, and
  stick close to you gentlemen."
  "Very well," Doc agreed.
  Court Tottingham departed, and the bronze man and his party resumed  the slight task of getting their gear
  together for departure, and  almost began making plans about how Fenter Bain should be trailed. It  was
  decided they would take no chances. Fiesta had obviously been  brought aboard in a trunk, they had concluded
  by now, so Monk and Ham  were assigned to keeping track of the trunk. Doc himself, and Hobo  Jones, would
  follow Fenter Bain.
  Suddenly, loud knocking sounded on the door. It was a steward.
  "Mr. Tottingham!" gasped the steward. "He is in his cabin, shrieking  for me to bring you at once!"
  They raced to Tottingham’s cabin. The door was locked.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XIII. TRICKS AND TRAPS
  51
  
  "Tottingham!" Doc rapped.
  There was no answer, and the bronze man called sharply again, then  threw himself against the door and burst
  out the lock. They stumbled  into the cabin, only to stop instantly.
  They stared at the man in the blue sports outfit who sat in a chair  on the other side of the cabin.
  They stared also at the bird that sat on Tottingham’s shoulder.
  THE combination of the man sitting in the chair�his head was twisted  back in a grotesque fashion, his mouth
  was open, and there was plainly  something horribly wrong with him�and the hideous skull−colored monster
  of a bird sitting on his shoulder was a grisly picture. It was  arresting, even to Doc Savage, who was no
  stranger to the fantastic and  terrible.
  "He’s dead!" Monk croaked. "Tottingham is dead!"
  Hobo Jones tried to speak. He made croaking sounds, and had to clear  his throat with a strident barking which
  would have been comical under  other circumstances.
  "That bird!" gasped Jones. "I’ll swear to blazes it’s the same  witch’s chicken that was in that strawstack shack
  on the desert."
  It seemed that they stood there for a long time in the door, frozen  by incredulous astonishment, although it
  was probably no more than a  second or two.
  Then the skull−colored bird turned into white flame. It made its  ratlike squeaking sound that was so frightful.
  The flame which the  thing became seemed to behave like liquid fire, for it ran down and  enveloped the body
  of the man on whose shoulder the horrible bird had  been perched. So that abruptly both bird and man were
  flame, white and  searing.
  Monk lunged forward. Doc stopped him. "Fire extinguishers!" the  bronze man rapped.
  It was only a few yards down the corridor to fire extinguishers.  They got two of them, leaped back, turned the
  chemical streams on the  horror in the cabin. Smoke billowed, spread, grew thicker.
  The terrific heat turned on the automatic fire sprinkler in the  center of the cabin, and water began flying out
  from it in all  directions. The water, hitting the flaming thing, became hissing steam.
  Ham came running with a fire hose, and they turned that on. The  steam, the smoke, the odor, drove them back
  out of the cabin, but no  farther than the door, where they remained playing the streams of  extinguisher
  chemicals and water.
  Gradually the white flame died in the thick smoke until it vanished  entirely. The heat subsided.
  "You stay at the door," Doc told Monk. "Ham, you go make sure that  Fenter Bain does not hear about this
  commotion and come here and  discover us."
  Ham departed on his errand. Monk and Jones remained in the corridor.  Doc Savage went into the room.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XIII. TRICKS AND TRAPS
  52
  
  The bird had burned, and the body was seared and consumed to the  point where it was recognizable only as a
  human being.
  Doc searched briefly, then went to the porthole, feeling his way  through the smoke. He put his head out, but
  there was nothing but the  warm dank darkness of the deck.
  The belongings of Court Tottingham were spread out on the bed, where  he had been packing. Among the
  stuff was a good thirty−five−millimeter  movie camera, a sixteen−millimeter camera, and the usual gadgets
  used  with cameras, telescopic lenses, filters, and that sort of thing.
  There was nothing to show that Court Tottingham was anything other  than he claimed to be�a wandering
  photographer who had taken a picture  of a ruined city in Indo−China, and drawn upon himself the curse of a
  skull−colored bird of fantastic death, known as the flaming falcon.
  Doc Savage left the cabin.
  "This is fantastic," croaked Hobo Jones. "Horrible."
  "Utterly," the bronze man agreed grimly.
  FENTER BAIN left the liner boldly, presented a passport that seemed  in order, and went through the customs
  in the conventional way. Doc  Savage and Jones kept on his trail, but at an unobtrusive distance.
  "There’s no sign of Fiesta!" Jones wailed. "Maybe they . . . maybe�"
  He meant that maybe they had murdered Fiesta and thrown her body  overboard while at sea, but he could not
  bring himself to word the  possibility.
  "Take it easy," Doc suggested gently. "They will smuggle her ashore,  Monk and Ham are keeping track of
  that end of it."
  Monk and Ham, as a matter of fact, were at that moment swimming in  the none−too−clean harbor water.
  They were following a small boat, a  sampan, into which a trunk had been unobtrusively lowered from the
  offshore side of the liner.
  The sampan landed in the darkness, and the trunk was promptly loaded  into a waiting ricksha and carried into
  a decrepit building.
  "Shall we go in after it?" Monk asked. "I’m in favor of that. Let’s  go in and start knocking heads off.
  Probably Dave Robertson is in that  building."
  "Listen, stupid," said Ham, "Dave Robertson is in the interior of  Indo−China, as far as we know. You just
  want to fight."
  A cry reached their ears. Feminine. Agonized. It was very short, and  ended abruptly. Both men involuntarily
  lunged forward, then stopped.
  It was important, both of them realized, to trail Fiesta Robertson  to her brother.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XIII. TRICKS AND TRAPS
  53
  
  A moment later, the trunk was carried out of the old building, and  again loaded into the ricksha.
  "They’re taking the empty trunk away," Monk decided. 
  Ham was silent�he also thought it was an empty trunk, but it was  against his policy to agree with Monk.
  The coolie who was pulling the ricksha had lighted an oil lantern,  and this dangled on the shafts as he trotted
  along. The swaying light  spread a glow over the trunk, which lay on edge in the ricksha.
  The conveyance passed very close to Monk and Ham. Both saw the gory  scarlet leakage that had crept from
  the edge of the trunk.
  "Great grief!" Monk breathed. "They murdered her!" 
  The homely chemist would have plunged out and leaped upon the  ricksha coolie, but Ham stopped him.
  "The blood doesn’t necessarily mean she is dead," Ham whispered.  "Let’s follow."
  They trailed the ricksha and the trunk.
  Their quarry did not waste time. He made for the harbor, reached a  deserted spot, calmly unloaded the trunk,
  opened it, lifted a large  rock off the ground and placed it in the trunk, then closed the lid and  rolled the trunk
  into the water.
  Monk and Ham yelled, rushed forward. The coolie ricksha man saw  them, emitted a yell of his own.
  Terror−stricken, he fled.
  Monk and Ham could chase him. But that would mean letting the trunk  sink. They didn’t want Fiesta to
  drown.
  Charging to the water, they dived in, and managed to get the trunk  out on shore.
  "Poor girl," Monk said grimly, and they opened the trunk.
  The trunk was empty.
  "Oh, blazes!" Monk snarled.
  The homely chemist raced back through the native streets to the old  building into which the trunk had early
  been carried, then brought out  again. Ham pounded on his heels. They were distraught, and they’d had
  enough of caution. They plunged into the old building, itching for  conflict. They were disappointed.
  There was no one in the evil−smelling old building, no one whatever.  There was no trail that they could
  follow.
  AT the same moment, Doc Savage and Hobo Jones were also somewhat  irked, although for an entirely
  different reason, and one not as  serious. Fenter Bain was killing time, plainly, and the delay was  aggravating.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XIII. TRICKS AND TRAPS
  54
  
  Fenter Bain had assembled his brown−skinned natives, and here it was  Bain who looked strange in the
  surroundings, not the brown men. The  streets were full of brown men who did not look a great deal different.
  "I’m in favor of walkin’ up and bustin’ that skinny guy’s neck!"  Jones snarled.
  A native approached Fenter Bain, and spoke at some length. Bain, for  a moment, was visibly uneasy. Then he
  regained control of himself.
  Doc Savage said, "Monk and Ham ran into a little trouble. It is  known that they were following the trunk, and
  they lost track of the  girl."
  "Huh?" Jones stared at the bronze man, open−mouthed.
  Fenter Bain was speaking to his men. They were seated in a café that  was open upon the street, and their
  faces were unpleasant under the  bluish lights of the place.
  Doc Savage said, "Come on. We’ve got to move fast."
  The bronze man dashed back to the pier checkroom, where he had left  his baggage, and hurriedly secured two
  of his metal equipment cases.
  "Hurry," he urged.
  They ran through the streets, ignoring the commotion they created.
  "But we’re leaving Fenter Bain!" Jones complained. "Dang it, he’s  our only chance of finding Fiesta."
  The bronze man said nothing, kept going. They found a taxi. There  was a short argument, an exchange of
  money, and Doc Savage took the  wheel. He drove very fast.
  The bronze man did not explain that maintaining a familiarity with  cities in the far corners of the world was a
  part of his business, and  that furthermore, he had visited this one on a number of previous  occasions.
  They reached the edge of the town, drove furiously for a short  distance, and turned onto a road which
  penetrated thick jungle.  Shortly, the bronze man stopped the car and sprang out.
  "Why’re you doing this?" Jones demanded desperately. 
  "Because of what that native told Fenter Bain back there, and also  because of what Bain told his men a
  moment afterward," the bronze man  explained patiently.
  "You know what they said?"
  "Yes."
  "How come?"
  "Lip reading," Doc said.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XIII. TRICKS AND TRAPS
  55
  
  Chapter XIV. THE JUNGLE AND BAD LUCK
  HOBO JONES had heard of lip reading, and believed it was possible  and all that, but encountering it in this
  unexpected fashion took his  breath. Furthermore, he was still puzzled. Before he could get  explanations,
  however, Doc Savage plunged into the undergrowth beside  the road. Jones followed. He nodded when the
  bronze man made gestures  indicating silence.
  They came, unexpectedly to Jones, upon the bank of a river.
  "Hey, there’s a seaplane!" Jones grunted.
  Doc Savage did not seem surprised, only interested in whether or not  the craft was occupied. His flake gold
  eyes searching, discerned two  men, both natives, stationed on the river bank near the plane,  obviously on
  guard.
  The bronze man opened one of his equipment cases and took out a box  which was not much larger than a
  shoe box, and equipped with a switch.  Doc threw the switch.
  He said, "Jones, you stay here and watch. When you see me alongside  the plane, create a commotion by
  yelling and screaming. Do not let them  see you, however. And do not yell English words. Just screech."
  Doc Savage moved to a point where brush grew down to the edge of the  water, and entered the river. The
  box, which he carried with him, was  waterproof. He sank beneath the surface. It was downstream to the
  plane, so swimming was an easy matter. He kept close to the bank, which  had been cut slightly by the water,
  and offered some concealment. When  finally he came to a spot opposite the plane, he ducked, swam out,
  came  up behind the pontoons of the ship.
  He lifted an arm. Jones saw the signal. Jones began to squall and  howl and thrash around in the brush. The
  two seaplane guards riveted  their attention on the sound.
  While the guards were distracted, Doc worked at one of the plane  floats. There was a waterproof hatch in the
  top of the thing, for there  was emergency storage space for supplies in this particular type of  float, as he had
  known there would be.
  Doc got the float hatch open, shoved his small box inside, far back  where it was not likely to be noticed, and
  replaced the hatch.
  The bronze man sank under the water, swam swiftly, gained the  overhanging bank, moved along this, and
  eventually came out on shore.
  Jones had stopped his squabbling. As a matter of fact, one of the  plane guards had come to investigate, and
  Jones had taken flight. Doc  followed. He did not molest the guard, who soon gave up and went back  to the
  moored seaplane.
  Eventually, Doc rejoined Jones.
  "We will stay in the neighborhood," the bronze man said. "Fenter  Bain will arrive shortly with Fiesta."
  Jones muttered, "You learned that by lip reading, too?"
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XIV. THE JUNGLE AND BAD LUCK
  56
  
  "Yes."
  THEY settled in the brush to wait. Jones was silent. He had thought  he’d been a trifle confused for several
  days, but the mental  involvement was getting worse. He tried to get it all straightened out  in his mind.
  "Let’s see, now: Fenter Bain had been growing a mysterious field of  yellow vegetables secretly in Arizona.
  Another gang had come along  headed by Court Tottingham and made away with the yellow vegetables.
  Fenter Bain, frightened, had headed for Indo−China, after seizing  Fiesta Robertson, and carrying her along.
  Fenter Bain wanted Fiesta,  probably, to use as a club over her brother, Dave Robertson, who was a
  mysterious prisoner somewhere in the jungle. An ugly skull−colored bird  had murdered different people, the
  last one being Court Tottingham.
  Even when you rounded it all up in your mind, it was still  confusing, Hobo Jones thought. There seemed to
  him to be only one  really clear objective about the whole thing, which was: They were  trailing Fenter Bain,
  and his prisoner, Fiesta, to the spot where the  girl’s brother, Dave Robertson, was held.
  "Quiet," Doc Savage warned abruptly.
  They could hear sounds of men at the seaplane. They crept to the  river edge, some distance away.
  Fiesta was being loaded into the seaplane. Fenter Bain waved his  arms, gave orders. It was evident that
  supplies were being loaded  aboard.
  A man stood on the floats, began working at the hatches. They were  going to store supplies in the floats.
  Doc’s small box would be certain  to be discovered.
  "Have you a gun?" Doc asked abruptly.
  "I’ve got that six−shooter I collected in Arizona," said Jones. 
  He handed the gun to Doc Savage, and the bronze man aimed briefly.  The gun exploded. Frightened
  waterfowl flew up off the river’s peaceful  surface. Men at the plane yelled. Doc shot again. A small geyser of
  water lifted beside the plane, where the bullet struck.
  Fenter Bain’s men returned the fire, but the slugs went wide. Doc  and Jones were concealed. Doc continued
  shooting deliberately, putting  the bullets very close to Fenter Bain, but making no effort to kill the  man,
  which he might have done easily.
  Fenter Bain’s nerve slipped.
  "Cut the plane loose!" he rapped. "Let’s get away from here!"
  They scrambled aboard the seaplane and took the air�without having  opened the float hatches.
  The plane, once it was off, came banking back. Men leaned out of the  cabin windows with rifles, hunting
  grimly for the sharpshooters who had  fired upon them. Doc and Jones lay under a thickly foliaged bush,
  hidden. After circling a few times, and sending down a few fruitless  bullets, the seaplane arched off toward
  the interior.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XIV. THE JUNGLE AND BAD LUCK
  57
  
  The ship became a noisy speck in the distance, and since the morning  air was gray with misty fog, the craft
  was lost to view before the  sound of its motors became inaudible. Finally there was only the faint  lapping of
  the river waves against the bank.
  Doc said, "It was fortunate for our purpose that they did not look  in the float and find that box."
  "What was in the box?" Jones asked, puzzled.
  "A small radio transmitter which puts out a continuous signal that  can be located by a direction−finder," the
  bronze man advised.
  "I didn’t know radios came that small."
  "They are quite common. For a long time, commercial broadcasting  companies have used the small
  ‘beer−mug’ type of transmitter, as they  are called, to broadcast special sports events where it was not  feasible
  to be bothered with a long microphone cord."
  "Can we trail the signal of that little radio?" Jones demanded.
  "Barring accidents."
  MONK and Ham were remarkably silent when Doc Savage and Jones joined  them in town. Monk and Ham
  were deflated. They had flopped on an  assignment, the way they looked at it, and their ego had received a bad
  puncturing.
  Doc Savage, it developed, had radioed ahead from the liner, and  secured an amphibian plane, just in case they
  would have a sudden need  for one upon arrival. They certainly needed it. The craft was moored by
  springlines between two piers on the water front. The fuel tanks were  full.
  They got aboard. Monk and Ham had picked up Habeas and Chemistry at  the steamship pier. Doc’s cases of
  mechanical devices were placed on  the ship.
  "What’ll we do about food?" Jones asked.
  "We’ll live off the jungle," Monk said.
  "Living off a jungle is the best thing Monk does," Ham explained,  indicating Monk’s distinctly apish physical
  construction. "You can tell  by looking at him that he is equipped by nature for it."
  Doc Savage opened the throttles, the plane raced across the river,  pulling widening fans of foam behind its
  floats, then went on step, and  finally stopped touching waves. They were headed upriver, because the  wind
  came from that direction, and after a time, they came to the spot  where Fenter Bain’s plane had been, and
  Jones pointed it out.
  "Doc," explained Jones, "read Fenter Bain’s lips when he told one of  his men to go and get Fiesta, and they
  would all meet at this spot.  Bain described exactly where the plane could be found, so Doc and I got  there
  first, and Doc managed to put a little radio transmitter in one  of the plane floats."
  "I’m surprised at your modesty," Monk grumbled. "You took a big part  in it, I’ll bet."
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XIV. THE JUNGLE AND BAD LUCK
  58
  
  "At least, I wasn’t jumping into the harbor after empty trunks,"  said Jones smugly.
  THEY flew inland, and leaving the coastal region that was cooled by  the sea, encountered hot, damp air that
  was about as pleasant breathing  as oil vapor. The mist continued to hang over the jungle, like steam,  although
  the sky was cloudless and the sun a burnished disk of heat.
  "Monk, you fly her," Doc suggested. "I will work with the radio  direction finder."
  The art of direction−finding by radio was an old one, ships at sea  having secured their bearings in that fashion
  for many years, but it  was an initial experience for Hobo Jones, and he watched with intense  interest. He
  watched Doc Savage spread a chart, make lines thereon with  a protractor. The bronze man produced the
  photograph which Court  Tottingham had given him, and compared the location of the ruined city  marked
  thereon with the course being taken by Fenter Bain’s plane.
  "Fenter Bain seems to be heading for the same spot that is marked on  the photograph," he remarked. "I
  expected as much."
  "Expected what?" asked Jones.
  "That the map on the photograph would be genuine," the bronze man  said. "However, there was a chance that
  it wasn’t, so we had to put the  radio in Fenter Bain’s plane to have a sure way of trailing him. But  the
  photograph map is genuine. This proves the whole thing."
  "Proves what?" prompted Jones when the bronze man fell silent.
  Doc Savage did not seem to hear, and he said nothing more on the  point, although Jones was itching to have
  more.
  In disgust, Jones finally went back and dropped in the seat along  Ham. He frowned, cupped his chin in his
  hands, and scowled through the  window at the steaming jungle that scudded below the plane.
  When a dark plane came up out of the jungle ahead, Jones thought at  first that it was a crow. But he soon saw
  that it wasn’t.
  Chapter XV. BIRD BATTLE
  MONK yelled, "There it is! Look!"
  Jones thought the homely chemist meant the black plane.
  "I see it," Jones said. "Boy, if ever there was a mean−looking  airplane, that’s it."
  "Not the plane�our ruined city," Monk shouted. "Over yonder!"
  Jones saw it, then. He peered intently. "Aw, shucks," he said. He  was disappointed. He had expected a great
  spectacular ruin, with  deserted streets stretching for miles, tall white minarets and  battlements glistening in
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XV. BIRD BATTLE
  59
  
  the sun, with possibly a jewel−incrusted  tower in the center, and an air of romance and mysterious
  breathtaking  beauty overspreading the whole. But what he was seeing was a bust, as  far as he was concerned.
  First, almost the whole thing was furred over by jungle. Secondly,  the entire ruin occupied only a few acres.
  The stones weren’t white;  they were a disappointing shade of brown, about the same hue as a  muskrat’s fur. It
  all looked like�well, a ruin that had been in the  jungle a long time, Jones decided.
  Then, suddenly, he was looking at his hands. Doc Savage had shoved a  parachute in them.
  "What the heck?" gulped Jones.
  Doc pointed below. "See that?"
  What the bronze man meant was a number�four, to be exact�of long  threads of what seemed to be gray
  vapor which had appeared mysteriously  below them.
  "Tracer bullets," the bronze man explained gravely. "That black  plane is a military type, half again as fast as
  this old ark we have  rented. We do not stand a chance."
  This plane they were in had seemed very fast to Jones, but staring  at the black craft, he changed his mind.
  The dark ship had the aspect  of a killer hornet.
  "Do you know how to put on a parachute?" Doc asked.
  "Me?" gasped Jones. "Listen, I don’t want�"
  "I’ll show him," Ham said grimly.
  Doc Savage lunged forward, carrying an equipment case, took the  controls, said, "Monk, you and Ham get
  Jones overboard, and get over  yourselves. Take the equipment, all but this case. I’ll try to keep  that black
  fellow from machine−gunning you on the way down."
  Monk nodded, dived back into the cabin, snatched a ‘chute and began  buckling it on. Hobo Jones was arguing
  loudly, and becoming a little  pale. He didn’t want to jump in any parachute, he insisted. He didn’t  like
  airplanes any too well to begin with.
  "Look," Ham said, pointing. "I think I see Fiesta down there."
  Jones really knew better, but he looked involuntarily, and Monk  smacked him on the jaw, rendering him
  limp. They strapped a ‘chute on  Jones.
  "I’ll jump with Jones," Monk said. "I’m beginning to kind of like  the cuss."
  "Give me your machine pistol," Doc said.
  Monk handed the weapon over.
  The homely chemist went overboard instantly, holding Jones in his  arms. When he had counted ten, Monk
  pulled the ripcord of Jones’  parachute, a mushroom of silk swooped into being, and Jones was  snatched
  away. After another ten counts, Monk yanked his own ‘chute  ripcord. Ham came tumbling down�he had
  lashed Habeas Corpus and  Chemistry to himself�and Monk had a terrible moment or two when he  thought
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XV. BIRD BATTLE
  60
  
  Ham’s chute had refused to open, but Ham was just playing safe,  and falling as close to the jungle as was
  advisable before he opened  his silken life preserver.
  Monk and Ham and Jones sank slowly toward the jungle treetops.
  As Doc had surmised, the black plane promptly dived for the men in  parachutes. Doc put his own slower
  crate over, went down. In the bronze  man’s hand was the machine pistol which Monk had handed him. Doc
  himself never carried firearms, but he had perfected this particular  weapon for the use of his men, although
  not for killing. The pistol  fired different types of cartridges�mercy bullets inducing  unconsciousness,
  explosive slugs, gassers, smokers.
  Doc leaned out, aimed, pulled the trigger. The gun made a deep  bull−fiddle moan, and a wisp−thread of
  tracer ran out from the muzzle.  Every fiftieth bullet was a tracer, and the little weapon loosened  slugs faster
  than most military machine guns.
  The pilot of the black plane saw the tracer. He banked, avoiding the  dangerous threads. He decided to let the
  men in parachutes alone. And  he came up in a sudden looping maneuver. His four machine guns  protruded
  tongues of red, and tracers crawled around Doc’s ship like  cobwebs. Doc rolled. Jacketed lead
  trip−hammered his plane fuselage.  Then he got clear.
  The two ships jockeyed in the sky. The black plane had a skilled  pilot, but it was instantly evident that the
  bronze man outmatched the  skill of the other by many times. But it was also apparent this would  not help.
  Plane to plane, he was outmatched. It was the same thing as  an expert lancer mounted on an ox, pitted against
  a fair lancer on an  agile Arabian steed. Only luck would save the bronze man, he knew  perfectly well. And he
  had learned that luck was a very fickle wench  upon which to depend.
  Doc delved into the equipment case, brought out three smoke bombs,  plucked the firing pins, and held them
  until they started smoking. He  dropped them, all pouring black vapor together.
  Flying tensely, preserving his life only by skill, he managed to  circle the spot where the smoke bombs had
  dropped, and dump others. The  sepia pall spread in the sky. He flew back and forth through it,  dodging the
  black ship.
  The smoke from the bombs stood, great awkward columns in the sky,  and in the jungle where the bombs had
  fallen, they were pouring out  more smoke that spread. They were like darksome, boughless trees that  reached
  upward. And in and out through and between the smoke pillars,  the two planes dodged, playing a game of
  hide and seek with death as  the stake.
  Until suddenly Doc Savage dived out of his plane.
  THE bronze man had calculated expertly, chosen a moment when the  black ship was behind one of the
  tree−things of smoke. He was not seen.  He fell into the thickest of the columns of smoke, and began counting
  grimly, one bronze hand fast to the ripcord of his parachute. He could  not see the earth, yet he wanted to fall
  as close to it as was safe  before he opened the ‘chute. He had only his sense of timing.
  Finally, he yanked the cord. The webbing harness wrenched at his  body, and he floated�almost immediately
  to be carried, by some  last−moment fault in the parachute’s filling, out of the smoke.
  He saw his own plane, far away in the sky, beginning to spin  earthward.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XV. BIRD BATTLE
  61
  
  The black killer ship had been deceived into following part way; the  black craft had turned back. But it was
  too far away. Doc did not even  trouble to sideslip his ‘chute back into the smoke. He picked a tree  that looked
  soft�there was nothing but treetops to choose for  landing�and came down.
  Tree limbs gouged him; some of them broke. Then he was clinging to a  bough, and struggling with the
  windgorged ‘chute, which wanted to drag  him. He got out of the harness.
  Overhead, the black plane slanted, guns drumming. There was sound of  loud leaden hail in the jungle. Leaves
  floated loose from their stems.  A few heavy tropical fruit fell, bumping from branch to branch.
  Doc dropped a dozen feet, caught a stout bough with his hands. He  calculated briefly, swung, and clamped
  his hands to another limb. He  ran along that one, using the agility and confidence of an anthropoid  at home in
  the forest lanes.
  It was probably only when he chose to travel in this fashion, in the  open upper ways of the forest, above the
  tangle of creepers and brush  that matted the earth itself, that the full extent of his physical  development
  became evident. His movements were so free as to seem  effortless, and the spaces that he spanned were
  dizzying, where a slip  would have meant crashing to death or serious injury far below.
  There was a distant crash as the plane which Doc Savage had deserted  fell into the jungle.
  The black ship moaned angrily overhead. Its guns continued to  clatter, frightening forest creatures, causing
  the jungle birds to set  up raucous clatter.
  Until finally the pilot of the dark craft became disgusted at the  futility of trying to inflict death, and swept
  away with an ugly,  defeated groan of his big engine.
  "Monk! Ham!" Doc called loudly. "Jones!"
  There was penetrating power in his great voice that made it echo  through the thick tropical tangle.
  "Over here," Monk yelled faintly. "Help, Doc! Help!"
  "What’s wrong?" Doc Savage shouted.
  "Help!" was all Monk could manage, "They’re killing me!"
  IN trying to land, Monk had obviously picked a large soft−looking  tree�then miscalculated. He had missed
  the tree, but his parachute had  hooked a great extending branch, so that Monk hung suspended in space,  a full
  forty feet above the ground, much too far to drop.
  Doc Savage heard the bedlam�Monk’s howling, and the furious  snarlings and chatterings of many other
  peculiar voices�long before he  reached the spot. When he came in sight, he stopped.
  The branches of trees surrounding the unfortunate Monk were laden to  bending with monkeys. There were
  large monkeys, small monkeys, fat ones  and thin ones, hundreds of them. The jungle at that point was
  profusely  filled with a species of fruit about the size of an orange, but much  harder. The monkeys were
  pelting the unfortunate Monk with this  ammunition. Monk had tried to climb his parachute shrouds, and some
  of  them had broken, so he was afraid to try again. The hurled missiles hit  him by the dozens, making loud
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XV. BIRD BATTLE
  62
  
  thumpings.
  "Help!" Monk roared. "They’re killin’ me!"
  Ham lay on the ground, holding his stomach. Ham looked as if he was  about to die, as indeed he was�from
  laughing.
  Hobo Jones stood near by, staring in bewilderment. Monk floundered  angrily. There was a ripping sound, and
  three more of the parachute  shrouds broke.
  Ham suddenly sobered. In a flashing moment, he became wildly anxious.
  "Hey!" he exploded. "He’s in real danger! He may fall!" 
  Ham made a rush to climb the big tree. But Doc Savage was far ahead  of him, already negotiating the upper
  branches with flashing speed. The  bronze man reached the ‘chute shrouds, pulled them together, and hauled
  Monk to safety.
  "You hurt?" Doc asked anxiously.
  "Of course I am!" Monk snarled. "My temper is shattered!"
  The homely chemist descended the big tree in rushing bloodthirsty  haste, and landed on the ground. He
  glared about belligerently.
  "Where’d Ham go?" he demanded.
  "He said," Jones explained, "that he thought he’d better take a  walk."
  Chapter XVI. SINISTER RUIN
  HOBO JONES tramped along behind Doc Savage and Monk�Ham trailed  them, but at a safe distance�as
  they set out for the ruin they had  sighted from the air. Jones was still bewildered. He could not quite  make out
  the characters of Monk and Ham, who, it was becoming obvious,  were as likely as not to pick the middle of
  the most dangerous kind of  an adventure to stage some personal clowning.
  However, Jones had a growing confidence in the bronze man, and in  Monk and Ham, for that matter, in spite
  of their zany behavior. He  found Monk and Ham entertaining, although at the most unexpected  moments. He
  also found himself in increasing awe of Doc Savage, and the  apparently unlimited abilities of the big bronze
  fellow.
  When they stopped abruptly, Jones realized that they had covered a  considerable distance through the
  steaming, insect−infested jungle, and  must be near the ruin.
  "Wait here," Doc Savage directed.
  Without more words, the bronze man grasped a trailing vine, climbed  hand over hand without the least
  apparent effort, swung to a limb, ran  along that, and jumped�to his death, Jones thought, gasping
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XVI. SINISTER RUIN
  63
  
  involuntarily�and grasped another tree bough safely and disappeared  into the twilight of the tropical growth.
  "How long do we have to wait?" Jones asked impatiently.
  "Maybe three days, maybe three seconds," Monk said. The homely  chemist found himself a soft rotting log,
  examined it to make sure  there were no stinging insects, then sat down. "Doc has gone ahead to  look around.
  He always does that." 
  Doc Savage kept to the upper lanes of the jungle, traveling  silently, and with a knowledge of woodcraft that it
  had taken many  patient days of study to attain. Once, when he encountered a gang of  the noisy little
  monkeys, he bounced up and down on a bough and made a  lifelike imitation of the angered cry of a bird of
  prey of which the  simians had a mortal fear. Every monkey became as quiet as a leaf, and  remained that way
  until the bronze man had gone on.
  At intervals, the bronze man crouched in silence, listening,  straining his sensitive hearing for some sign of
  those he sought. There  were no noises except those of the jungle.
  He came suddenly upon the ruin. Its crumbled stone outer limit was  below him, and before him, the brown
  rock ramparts stood, many of them  higher than the giant tree in which he crouched. It was much larger  than it
  had appeared from the air.
  He waited and watched for a long time. Then he dropped down and  began crawling among the rugged,
  tumbled stones.
  THE bronze man possessed an extensive knowledge of the branches of  archaeology dealing with what was
  known of the ancient races which had  constructed this ruin and a number of others in this section of Asia.
  Very little, in fact, had been proven about the ancient builders. Where  they had come from, why they had
  abandoned their cities in the jungle,  were unfathomed mysteries.
  Doc had visited other similar ruins, studying their enigma, and he  noted that this one was similar in
  architectural aspects, the most  noticeable of which was the profusion of carving on the stone. Every  face of
  stone had originally borne a design of some sort, although many  of these had weathered away during the
  centuries since the occupants,  for what reasons were not known, had vanished.
  He worked his way through passages that had been streets, crowding  between the trunks of trees, and
  worming through the tangles of vines,  that now gorged the thoroughfares. He edged past huge blocks of
  stone,  stone he believed not to be found anywhere in this vast jungle, but  brought from some unknown quarry.
  There seemed to be a central palace, he perceived, and stretching  before that, a great lagoon which contained
  water, and had once, no  doubt, been a floating garden.
  The lagoon had been cleared of water plants. On it rested two  planes. The ship that Fenter Bain had used, the
  craft in which Doc had  planted the little radio transmitter. And the fast little black ship  that had forced Doc
  and his men to quit their own plane. Both aircraft  rested on the lagoon. No human was in sight.
  Doc Savage flattened on a rock and pondered. This silence, the lack  of life, were unnatural. It portended,
  something, and doubtless what it  meant was unpleasant, and aimed at Doc and his party.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XVI. SINISTER RUIN
  64
  
  It seemed logical that there should be guards about, but there were  no guards. No searching parties had been
  abroad in the jungle. It was  queer.
  The planes were a little too much like bait. Doc did not approach  them. Instead, he worked to the right, where
  there was a series of  terraces, surmounted by some kind of structure at the top.
  The terraces, he discovered, were huge. Each of them was fully  thirty feet in height, a great encircling wall,
  filled level with  earth, and on top of that, another smaller wall crammed with earth, and  so on.
  When the bronze man topped the second wall�there were rents and  rifts through which he could climb, and
  still remain concealed�he came  to a stop.
  The terraces were planted with strange yellow vegetables.
  DOC SAVAGE crawled among the strange things, and investigated. Hobo  Jones’ description of them had
  been remarkably accurate. They were  unusual. The leaves had a distinctive shape. The plants themselves
  were  not exactly vines, but more like bushes, and the fruit upon them were  large and yellowish, although on
  some of the plants the melon−shaped  things were green, like any other growing vegetable.
  Doc tore open one of the fruit with his hands, then spent several  moments rubbing his hands with earth to
  remove the incredibly sticky  pulp that composed the interior of the things.
  The soil here on these terraces, since it was not irrigated, and  exposed to the terrific heat of the tropical sun,
  was very much like  the soil of Arizona. There was even, he saw, a great deal of sand mixed  in with the dirt.
  It looked as if these terraces had been converted into experimental  gardens.
  The bronze man began retracing his steps, and it was then that he  saw one of the skull−colored birds.
  The horrible thing was flying. Always before, except on the occasion  when one of the witch’s chickens had
  pursued Fiesta, the things had  been roosting. But this one flew. It was making slow circles, great  outspread
  wings flapping lazily.
  But the bird’s hideous head was extended on the end of his vile  neck, and the blood−sac eyes seemed to be
  looking for something.
  Doc Savage became very still. Also, for one of the few times in his  life, he showed an emotion. The emotion
  was not exactly fear�it was  certainty that if that flying thing saw him, he stood small chance of  living.
  He remained frozen. He knew that many wild creatures have difficulty  discerning a stationary object, and that
  predatory birds were among  these�that being the instinctive reason for chickens flattening  motionless in the
  barnyard when the shadow of a hawk passes.
  But�the infernal bird saw him. It swung toward him, and he knew  suddenly that there was not the slightest
  doubt.
  Doc whipped into the nearest crevice, dropped swiftly down it. He  gained the level of the surrounding
  ground, while the infernal grayish  bird coasted around in the hot air overhead, cocking its ugly eyes to
  examine the rocks in a way that might have been comical under other  conditions.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XVI. SINISTER RUIN
  65
  
  The thing had lost trace of the bronze man. But it was persistent.  It kept hunting. And suddenly it made a
  slashing dive off in a false  direction, evidently misled by some bush that had moved in the breeze.
  Doc took that chance. He raced, endeavoring to reach the surrounding  jungle.
  But the bird popped up into view again, saw him, and came winging.  Awkward though the thing looked, it
  was actually fast. Doc looked  backward. The bird was going to catch him. He remembered that Fiesta  had
  said the bird that had chased her had flown over her head while her  old car was traveling at least fifty miles
  an hour. No man could run  that fast on foot.
  Doc veered toward the lagoon. It might offer safety. He reached the  edge, looked back, saw the grotesque
  aërial hobgoblin was actually  extending its neck for him, and dived into the water.
  He came up for air, after swimming to a point several yards from  shore.
  The hideous bird was flying around only a few feet above, watching  him. It lunged at him.
  Doc sank again. The bird continued to fly around over the water, but  the bronze man did not again rise to the
  surface.
  HIGH on the pyramid, Fenter Bain came out of a narrow cleft in the  stone which was closed by a door. Bain
  was pale, and obviously  horrified.
  "Doc Savage is dead," Bain muttered. "When he came to the surface  that last time, the bird killed him."
  Fenter Bain stared at the slowly circling devil−bird. He was too  terrified to feel relief at the death of Doc
  Savage, who had followed  him all the way from Arizona. Nothing would have given Bain relief, not  while
  that bird was in sight.
  He did not dare venture out of the narrow cleft of stone; he kept  one foot within, ready to dodge back.
  The devil−bird flew around for several minutes, then winged over and  alighted on Fenter Bain’s plane. It sat
  there, perfectly motionless,  about the size of a goat, with its wings folded. Utterly hideous.
  Suddenly, it burst into flame. White, sheeting flame, that seemed to  dissolve the bird, and melted almost
  instantly through the wings of the  plane to the gas tank, the fuel contents of which caught fire.
  There was an explosion, and the plane came apart, and burning  gasoline spread over that part of the little
  lagoon.
  The flaming gasoline reached the black plane, licked at the  pontoons, lunged high, and the kapok wood which
  had been used to build  up the streamlining of the struts took fire, and shortly that plane  also became a bundle
  of flame, then exploded, scattering gasoline and  smoke.
  "Oh, oh," groaned Fenter Bain.
  Two of his brown men had come to the opening, and were looking over  his shoulder. Now one of them
  barked in horrified astonishment, pointed.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XVI. SINISTER RUIN
  66
  
  A devil bird was winging along the side of the pyramid, making for  them, its long evil neck outstreched. It
  looked exactly like the bird  that had just turned into flame down there on the lagoon. It might have  been a
  reincarnation of that bird.
  Fenter Bain gave a shriek of terror, so piercing that it was like a  whistle. He ducked back, dragging the door
  shut.
  Chapter XVII. DEVIL BIRDS
  THE shriek of Fenter Bain, being high and piping like a whistle,  reached Monk where he sat on the rotting
  log. Monk sprang up in alarm,  because there was a definitely grisly quality to the shriek.
  "What was that?" gulped Monk.
  Monk had been holding a number of the small, hard orangelike fruit  in his lap, and these fell unheeded to the
  ground. Monk had been  hurling the fruit at Ham with great violence, whenever that individual  dared thrust
  his head out of the surrounding jungle. He had even lobbed  a few at Chemistry, Ham’s pet, but Chemistry
  was an experienced dodger  and remained unhit.
  Ham now came out of the jungle. Their squabble was temporarily  postponed. That sound had been grim.
  Hobo Jones looked around dubiously. He said, "I always wanted to  visit a jungle, but, brothers, you can have
  my part of it from now on."
  The silence about them was utter. The jungle birds, they suddenly  realized, had become mysteriously quiet.
  There was no stirring, none of  the shrill cries and chirpings that had furnished a kind of background  bedlam
  throughout.
  "Queer," Ham breathed. "I wonder what’s happening to Doc?"
  Monk and Ham exchanged looks. In their association with Doc Savage,  it was understood that they should
  use their own brains whenever they  saw fit. Doc had told them to wait. On the other hand, if they didn’t  deem
  it advisable to do so, it was their privilege to take any action  they wished.
  "I move we look at that ruin," Monk muttered.
  "Seconded," said Ham, and Hobo Jones nodded. Jones had drawn his big  six−shooter and was spinning the
  cylinder, nervously looking to make  sure the gun was loaded.
  They advanced through the jungle. They did not make it nearly as  smoothly as had Doc Savage, in the upper
  pathways. Ham and Jones, while  beyond average strength, lacked the physical power to swing from one
  branch to another. Monk was fairly adept at it, but the uncomplimentary  remarks made by Ham and Jones
  about the probable nature of his  immediate ancestors kept him on the ground.
  They did not chop their way with the short heavy knives, having  blades about a foot in length, with which
  they had equipped themselves  from their supply cases. That would have been too noisy.
  Their eyes discerned the column of dark smoke that came from the  burning plane.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XVII. DEVIL BIRDS
  67
  
  "Hey, look!" Jones remembered the dull explosion which they had  heard prior to the strange shriek. "I bet
  you Doc set fire to their  planes."
  "I bet you that he didn’t," Monk said. "If he burns those planes,  how’re we gonna get out of here?"
  Ham suddenly gestured for silence. They could see the ruins through  the jungle ahead.
  But more than that, there was a brown man crawling furtively toward  them, and looking back over his
  shoulder in the most fear−stricken  fashion.
  MONK had picked up a caveman−sized club en route. He held it lifted,  ready to bring down on the
  approaching native. But the native saw them  first.
  The brown−skinned native gave a violent start, and his face showed  plainly that he was far from enthusiastic
  about meeting them. Then he  did an unexpected thing�he put a finger to his lips, admonishing  silence.
  Monk blurted, "Say, what�"
  "Sh−h−h!" warned the native.
  Monk thought it was some trick. He stepped back warily, and  exchanged his club for his machine pistol,
  which Doc had returned. The  exchange was evidence of how seriously Monk took the situation; in all
  ordinary fights, Monk preferred a club or his fists.
  The brown native came close.
  "Please do not make any noise," he said in excellent English. "There  will be the devil to pay, if we are heard."
  "Listen," Monk whispered, lowering his voice involuntarily, "you are  one of Fenter Bain’s gang."
  "Have I denied it?" asked the native. He repeated, "Don’t make a  noise. We’ve got to escape."
  Jones, lunging forward, demanded, "Is Fiesta all right?"
  "Yes," said the other.
  Monk told the brown native, "Escape! You had better be thinking  about escaping us, my friend. We’re
  enemies, you know."
  The native shook his head.
  "When the lions are about, the sheep and the goats forget their  differences," he said. "We shall be fortunate if
  any one of us escapes  with our lives."
  "Huh?"
  "Fenter Bain sent me to see if it was possible to escape by this  route," the brown fellow explained.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XVII. DEVIL BIRDS
  68
  
  "None of you are going to escape," Monk said. "We’re going to grab  you. I wish you’d get that through your
  head."
  The native looked disgusted. "You do not understand. We all face an  infinitely terrible danger."
  "Yeah?" Monk was skeptical.
  "Doc Savage has already met his death from the danger," the native  said.
  The effect of that statement on Monk and Ham was pronounced. First,  they stared intently at their informant
  to see if he was lying to them.  Obviously, he wasn’t. Monk and Ham became tense and lost color.
  "How did it happen?" Monk asked grimly.
  The native gave them a vivid picture of what had happened to Doc  Savage. He had been one of those who
  peered over Fenter Bain’s shoulder  and watched Doc’s frenziedly futile flight from the horror bird. He did
  not use fancy words or embellishments; he spoke plainly, and it had the  ring of truth. Monk and Ham were
  thoroughly convinced.
  "What is this flaming falcon thing?" Monk asked.
  The native shook his head.
  "We do not know," he said.
  "But the thing is supposed to haunt this particular ruin," Monk told  him.
  That plainly astonished the native, and he immediately shook his  head again.
  "You are mistaken," he assured Monk. "No flaming falcon was ever  seen in this neighborhood before today. I
  should know. I have lived at  this ruin off and on for four years."
  "But a fellow named Court Tottingham told us the flaming falcon  haunted this place."
  "I do not know a Court Tottingham, but it is not true. I have been  here four years."
  "You’ve lived around here?" Monk scowled at him. "What doing?"
  "Conducting experiments for Fenter Bain," said the brown−skinned  fellow.
  "What kind of experiment?"
  "That," said the other, "is something I do not think I will reveal."
  "In that case"�Monk fell upon him suddenly�"I think we’ll just tie  you up."
  THE native made no outcry. Indeed, he even seemed to coöperate with  them in avoiding noise, extending his
  wrists with a resigned sigh to be  bound. They removed part of the long cloth from about his middle, cut  it in
  strips with the thick bush knives, and used these to tie him. As  they finished the job, they realized their
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XVII. DEVIL BIRDS
  69
  
  prisoner was trembling from  fright.
  "Say," said Ham, "this beggar is in earnest."
  "I am," insisted their prisoner. "I know how terrible this death of  the flaming falcon can be."
  "I thought," said Monk, "that you had never heard of it until today."
  The brown man shook his head. "No, no, I said it had never appeared  here until today." He peered at them
  intently. "It has been heard  of in Indo−China for some years, however. Men have been found dead,  with a
  horrible bird sitting in the room. The bird invariably bursts  into flame before long."
  The captive fell to trembling again, so that there now remained no  doubt in the listeners’ minds that he was in
  genuine terror. They  looked at each other. They had been whispering throughout. The abnormal  silence still
  gripped the jungle, as well.
  "Notice," said the native, "that every living thing in the forest is  still from fear of the flaming falcon."
  There was another silence. To say that the situation was on the  nerves of Monk, Ham and Jones was putting it
  mildly. In order to get  their minds back on something with some resemblance to sensible  reality, Ham put a
  question to the prisoner.
  "How come you speak such good English?" Ham asked.
  "I attended Harvard University, in your United States," the native  explained.
  "You�what?" Ham blinked. "So did I. Listen, I don’t believe . . .  what courses did you take?"
  "I specialized in horticulture," explained the brown−skinned man.
  "Who taught it?"
  "Professor Everett Dane Algiers."
  "That’s right," Ham admitted.
  Hobo Jones said, "Say, Fiesta told us her brother Dave was a  horticulturist, too."
  "A very good one," said their brown prisoner. "One of the best in  the world, Fenter Bain and myself are
  convinced. Of course, he has been  handicapped in his work recently," the man added, and smiled thinly.
  "Yes, Dave Robertson has been�er�handicapped."
  "You’ve got him a prisoner," Jones accused.
  The native nodded. "You know that already, so why should I deny it?"
  "What have you been making Dave Robertson do?"
  The native only shook his head stubbornly.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XVII. DEVIL BIRDS
  70
  
  Monk picked up the prisoner. "We’ll just take you along," he said.  "If any skull−colored bird gets to fooling
  around us, we’ll feed you to  him."
  HAVING voiced his own determination to go ahead to the ruin and see  what all the fright was about, Monk
  looked at the others to get their  opinion. Ham merely nodded. Jones drew his gun and shoved forward. "I’m
  not leaving here without Fiesta!" he declared.
  Their prisoner was a fatalist. Having failed in all his arguments,  he resigned himself. However, his skin
  slowly turned to somewhat  grayish color, which indicated how terrified he had become.
  They shoved, as quietly as they could, through the few remaining  yards of jungle, and came out on the edge
  of the ruin. Jones looked it  over. "I guess it’s more of what a ruin should be than I figured," he  admitted.
  They lay there, watching, seeing nothing whatever. 
  Their prisoner spoke. Judging from his words, he was trying to get  his mind off his present predicament.
  "Will you tell me something?" he  asked.
  "Maybe," Monk said. "What do you want to know?"
  "Did you capture and kill one of our men on the boat coming across  the Pacific?" he asked. "A white man.
  We have a few white men working  with us."
  "No," Monk said.
  "But one disappeared."
  Monk growled, "Maybe it was Court Tottingham, whom you said you  didn’t know. Was he a large man with
  an English accent?"
  "He was fair−sized," said the native. "But he had a large purple  birthmark on the left side of his neck,
  extending up under his ear. It  was very distinctive."
  "That was not Court Tottingham," Monk declared. 
  The native shook his head in a puzzled way. "It is very strange. We  could not figure what happened to him.
  Perhaps he fell overboard at  night."
  Problems and mysteries of the past did not appeal to Monk. They had  plenty on their hands for the present.
  The homely chemist shook his  shoulders impatiently.
  "Habeas," he called, and when the pig came to his side, Monk  ordered, "Go look around. Scout, Habeas."
  The pig had been trained to do this, an operation that had taken a  great deal of Monk’s spare time�time that
  Ham always insisted had been  wasted. However, the pig came back shortly, unexcited, and Monk let out  a
  breath of relief.
  "We’re safe," he said.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XVII. DEVIL BIRDS
  71
  
  They crawled into the ruins.
  Chapter XVIII. WEIRD FIGHT
  SMOKE still arose from the lagoon where the planes had burned, for a  part of one of the ships had been
  hurled onto the bank by the  explosion, and it smoldered there, pouring up lazy wisps of black.  Other than
  that, as far as appearances went, the ruin might have been  exactly as it was during any day of the past
  centuries.
  The sun was now directly overhead, and it poured down baking heat.  Except at brief intervals, minutes apart,
  when a wayward breeze shook  its leafage, the tropical jungle was utterly still. The crawling men  could hear
  their own breathing, taste sweat on their lips.
  They thoroughly surveyed the lower part of the ruin, and were about  to start for the upper terraces of the great
  pyramidlike central  structure when the bird appeared.
  "Look!" Ham gulped.
  The great, hideous, skull−colored thing was some distance away, over  toward the far edge of the jungle. It
  flew slowly, back and forth, his  neck extended downward, its head turning from side to side as it  searched the
  ground.
  The native prisoner began to tremble violently. "Lie very still!" he  croaked. "It may not see us!"
  Jones drew his six−shooter.
  "Listen," Jones said, "I believe I can pop that thing one from here.  Paw used to have an old pistol, and I got
  plenty good with it."
  The native emitted a gasp of horror. "Shooting it will not save us!"
  "Listen, I don’t believe in spooks," Jones said. "I can shoot that  bird plenty dead."
  The native tried to answer, but his fright made him inarticulate.
  "Look," Monk said uneasily, "our friend here seems kinda in earnest  to me. Maybe we better just lay still."
  They remained frozen among the tumbled ruins�they were almost  completely hidden anyway�and eventually
  the great bird flapped lazily  away and disappeared into the jungle, to the definite relief of the  watching men.
  "Where did Doc sink in that lagoon?" Monk asked grimly. The homely  chemist bit his lips, and his voice
  became husky. "I�I’m gonna�aw,  blazes!" Monk was near breaking down. "We’ve got to get Doc’s body,"
  he  blurted.
  Unwillingly, the native pointed out the spot, and they crawled  toward it. Since they did not think it advisable
  to untie their  prisoner, they hauled him along with them as they moved.
  Both Monk and Ham were very grim. They had been associated with Doc  Savage for a number of years, and
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XVIII. WEIRD FIGHT
  72
  
  so frequently had the bronze man  narrowly escaped death that they had probably arrived, subconsciously,
  where they took it for granted that he was invulnerable. It came as a  grisly shock when they were told that he
  was dead. And the fact that  the manner of his dying was utterly mysterious added to their grief,  somehow. If
  Doc’s death had come in a manner they could understand, it  would have been something they could grasp,
  although it probably would  have been no less terrible. Recovering the bronze man’s body had  suddenly
  assumed a great importance to them.
  They did not reach the lagoon, however, before the bird appeared  again. The horror came winging straight
  toward them.
  "It’s seen us!" Monk exploded. "Run for it!" And the homely chemist,  with a quick slash of his bush knife,
  freed the legs of their native  prisoner.
  But they stood no chance whatever of reaching shelter before the  bird overtook them, unless something
  interrupted its somber progress.
  JONES, who had been itching to try his six−shooter, lifted the  weapon, aimed, and fired. The skull−colored
  bird flopped wildly to one  side, as if the bullet had gone close, but it came on. Once more, Jones  shot. Again,
  he missed.
  "Whew!" he said.
  "The way your hand is shaking," Monk growled, "I don’t ever feel  safe standing behind you."
  Jones shot again.
  "Got ‘im!" he yelled.
  The big skull−colored bird turned into a disorganized bundle of  wings, legs and snaky neck, in the air. It hit
  the ground with a loud  plop.
  Jones, proud of himself, said, "Boy, am I good!" He started forward.  "C’mon. Let’s have a close look at one
  of these roosters, for a change."
  They advanced a few paces, and Ham suddenly rapped a warning that  brought them up short. The dapper
  lawyer leveled an arm, and said, "You  see that lizard!"
  The lizard, rock−colored, had been clinging to a stone between  themselves and the spot where the
  skull−colored bird had fallen.
  The lizard slowly became rigid at the end of extended legs, then  fell off the rock to which it had been hanging.
  A moment later, they saw another lizard�this one closer to them. It  did the same thing.
  "Death!" their native prisoner croaked. "It approaches!" Suddenly  the brown man lifted his voice in a
  maniacal scream. "Run, you fools!"  he shrieked. "Run!"
  They ran. They couldn’t help it. They turned and dived away from  that spot, scrambling over rocks and
  smashing through underbrush.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XVIII. WEIRD FIGHT
  73
  
  Behind them, there was a great burst of white flame, brilliant even  in the sunlight, and they knew that the bird
  was blazing.
  And almost at once, another of the skull−colored horrors came  winging out of the jungle, and flopped lazily
  through the hot air  toward them.
  "Great snakes!" Monk gasped. "The place is alive with ‘em!"
  Their prisoner wailed a suggestion. "There are passages into the  pyramid. Come!"
  Ordinarily, Monk and Ham would have thought several times before  barging blindly into a place of refuge
  about which they knew nothing.  But this was no moment for dallying. They were convinced that the
  skull−colored birds did carry death. They wanted to get under cover.
  So they rushed to a stone door which their prisoner pointed out,  wrenched it open, and crowded inside along
  with the two pets. They  closed the door. It was very dark.
  A flashlight beam blazed into their eyes.
  Fenter Bain’s voice said, "The thing for you to do is get your hands  up. All of you!"
  THEY had just come in out of bright sunlight, so the flashlight beam  did not blind them as much as it might
  have. Moreover, suddenly coming  up against human foes had an unexpected effect. The fantastic bird  menace
  had unnerved them. But the reality of a voice making threats  spurred them into taking chances that they might
  not have taken  otherwise.
  Hobo Jones fired from the hip. He’d practiced that with his paw’s  old pistol, and he was pretty good. Also,
  possibly he was a little  lucky. He smashed the flashlight, made a man scream.
  Monk and Ham pitched forward, arms outspread and groping. They found  plenty of foes. Furthermore, most
  of the bodies were seminaked and  oiled, so that they were harder than fish to hold.
  "No more lights!" Fenter Bain yelled. "Their eyes are not as used to  the dark as ours!"
  That was true, and it was their downfall. That, and the fact that  their enemies had clubs. Monk went down
  first, having been slammed over  the head. Ham, dancing about, was tripped, and kicked on the temple  with a
  bare heel, and stunned. Then Hobo Jones had his revolver knocked  out of his hand, and he was borne down
  by a mass of native bodies.  Until finally, he was helpless, and someone struck him in the face  until things
  swam in blackness.
  When they got themselves organized again�it could have been no more  than a few minutes later�they were
  in a room with Fiesta Robertson and  a tall young man, a stranger, who had a suffering−grooved face and
  almost completely white hair.
  Monk said, "You’re Dave Robertson?"
  The young man with the grooved face and the white hair nodded.  "Yes," he admitted gloomily. "I am Dave
  Robertson. I’ve caused a hell  of a thing to happen, haven’t I?"
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XVIII. WEIRD FIGHT
  74
  
  Monk looked around. The room was of stone. There were no windows,  only one door, and that barred. The
  air was not too good, although dry  enough. The cell, for a prison cell was what it amounted to, was  furnished
  with a cot, and there was a lighted gasoline lantern and a  bookcase containing�Monk looked closely to see
  the titles�books on  tropical plants and branches of horticulture. Dave Robertson’s prison,  this must be.
  Ham went to the barred door and pounded it. A brown face immediately  appeared on the other side. The face
  of their late prisoner.
  "How about letting us out of here?" Ham asked.
  The native who had gone to Harvard smiled vaguely. "Quite  impossible," he said. "Oh, quite."
  Ham tried to grab him through the bars, but the brown man stepped  back, so that the seizure attempt was
  unsuccessful.
  Ham turned to Dave Robertson.
  "Did I hear you say a minute ago that you had caused all this to  happen?" Ham asked Dave Robertson.
  DAVE ROBERTSON nodded slowly, his face grim in the light from the  gasoline lantern, and looked at his
  sister. Fiesta, still very pretty,  although bearing traces of her long role as a prisoner, was looking at  Hobo
  Jones, who in turn had eyes for no one but the young woman. Monk  and Ham, who had both harbored some
  amorous ideas about the young  woman, felt a little empty. They knew, from the way Jones and Fiesta  were
  looking at each other, who was in love with whom.
  Dave Robertson nodded again. "Yes," he said, "I suppose I am  responsible. Indirectly."
  "Indirectly?"
  "I developed, here in this jungle, the new type of plant that will  grow in arid, desert country, and yield
  rubber," he explained.
  "Rubber?" Monk ejaculated.
  "Exactly."
  Monk digested this. Rubber? At first, it struck him as a very small  thing to cause so much trouble. Then the
  magnitude of the thing began  to dawn upon him. Rubber? There were millions and millions of dollars
  involved in the industry, billions. All of the world’s supply of crude  rubber came from the tropics, and
  nothing had ever been developed that  would successfully displace the tropical rubber tree. The great
  American inventor, Thomas A. Edison, had spent most of the last years  of his life trying to develop a plant
  that would grow in the United  States and produce rubber. Such a plant, if developed would be  worth�well,
  millions and millions.
  "Some of those yellow vegetables were growing in Arizona," Monk said  grimly. "You mean to say they will
  produce rubber?"
  "Yes," said Dave Robertson.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XVIII. WEIRD FIGHT
  75
  
  "You mean that the rubber plants will grow in the Arizona desert?"
  "Yes."
  Monk’s mouth fell open. This was tremendous. He thought of  the great desert waste lands of Arizona, New
  Mexico, and the other  Western States. If that land could produce rubber�
  "Great dollars!" Monk gulped, and looked at Ham.
  Ham asked, "Robertson, how did this thing get so involved?"
  Dave Robertson shrugged. "It is simple. I got my rubber plant  partially developed, and ran out of money. I
  went to Fenter Bain to  finance me. He not only financed me�he made me a prisoner, for he  realized how
  important the thing was."
  "And then?" Ham prompted.
  "Fenter Bain took some of the plant roots to Arizona to grow a test  field. The test had to be grown in great
  secrecy, of course. Later, if  it was successful, the American tire companies and other concerns that  buy
  rubber would be willing to pay a tremendous price for the plant."
  "But this trouble that developed?" Ham asked. "What is it?"
  "Simple, also. Some of the great rubber producers in the tropics  learned about the plant. Naturally, they
  would be ruined if rubber  could be grown all over the western United States. One of the rubber  companies
  was unscrupulous enough to hire a professional killer to wipe  out Fenter Bain and the secret of the new
  rubber plant."
  Ham rubbed his jaw. He repeated the thing, just to get it straight  in his mind.
  "An unscrupulous rubber producer hired a killer to get rid of Fenter  Bain and the rubber−plant secret?" he
  said.
  "Yes."
  "And the killer is this�this flaming falcon thing?"
  "Yes."
  "What is the flaming falcon?"
  "I don’t know." Dave Robertson shook his head. "None of us know."
  Ham said, "The flaming−falcon menace has Fenter Bain and all the  rest of you besieged here now?"
  "Yes," said Dave Robertson grimly. "That’s it."
  A LONG time later�they knew by their watches that darkness had now  fallen over the jungle�there was a
  rattling of the door lock, and the  door itself opened. Several menacing rifle muzzles poked inside.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XVIII. WEIRD FIGHT
  76
  
  Fenter Bain spoke from behind his men. Harshly.
  He said, "We can’t be bothered worrying about you fellows."  Obviously, he meant Monk, Ham and Hobo
  Jones. "We’re going to take you  out, one at a time, and shoot you."
  Fenter Bain’s brown natives came inside. They seized Ham, and  dragged him out while the others were held
  helpless by the menace of  rifles.
  Chapter XIX. RAIDERS
  OVER the jungle and over the ruin lay darkness, not lightened in the  least by moonlight, and because it was
  very early in the night, very  little of the heat of the day had been dissipated as yet. The jungle  itself was quiet,
  unnaturally so, as if all the wild things were still  and in hiding because of some greater danger that was about.
  Doc Savage, when he climbed out of the lagoon, did so silently. He  sat on the edge and let water drain from
  his great metallic body, and  began slowly taking off his clothing, except for his trousers, which he  wrung out
  carefully, then rolled the legs above his knees.
  He was weak. Weaker than he had expected, for he had been under the  water a long time, and that, and the
  suspense, had sapped some of his  enormous reserve of vitality.
  He had worn, for the first three hours, a small gas mask� a nasal  clip and a mouthpiece attachment�which
  was effective also as an  underwater "lung," being equipped with a small oxygen tank. He had  removed the
  "lung" finally, knowing that the chemicals therein were  close to exhaustion, and wanting to retain some of
  them, so that he  might use the "lung" for a gas mask later.
  After removing the "lung," he had breathed through a small  telescoping metal tube, one end of which he had
  thrust above the  surface, after which he had blown out the water.
  It had not been easy. True, he had found a large rock on the bottom  of the lagoon, and placing that on his
  chest to hold himself down had  simplified the thing somewhat. Now it was dark, and he was ready to go  into
  action.
  Having stripped himself to trousers alone, the bronze man went  through his clothing and removed such
  mechanical devices as it seemed  likely he would need, and could be conveniently carried.
  He heard a small sound. Men, he realized after he had listened. They  were creeping silently, and converging
  upon the pyramid. A bit later,  there were voices.
  Doc crept close enough to hear.
  "We will make it an open raid," one of the voices was saying. "And a  jolly complete one it must be, too. We
  do not want them creeping away  in the darkness."
  "They will not dare flee," suggested another voice. "They are  scared. They fear the birds."
  "Nevertheless, we take no chances. Come on. You say you know one of  the entrances to the interior of that
  pyramid structure?"
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XIX. RAIDERS
  77
  
  "Yes."
  The raiders moved forward, exercising the greatest of stealth, and  the bronze man trailed them. The small
  amount of clothing that he wore  increased his ability to travel with silence.
  Whisperings came to his ears. Evidently they had reached the  entrance. There was a grating noise. Then a
  grunt of disgust.
  "Jove," said the voice in charge. "They have fastened the thing on  the inside. Where are those grenades?"
  "Here."
  "Righto," said the leader. "Now stand back."
  A moment later, there was a crash, sheeting flame, and the air was  full of flying rock fragments. They had
  blown open the door.
  The raiders charged inside. Doc followed them.
  THERE was a shot, then another, and a yell. Powerful  flares�gasoline−soaked rags, to which matches were
  applied; lights that  could not readily be extinguished by bullets�blazed up. The raiders  charged forward.
  They did not glance behind; their attention was only  for what was ahead.
  The stone passage was high, arched and short. It terminated against  a flight of steps which led upward. The
  men mounted these. Someone  fired at them from the top, and they drove bullets back. The blasts  were
  deafening, and somewhere, a rock fell off one of the ancient  walls, dislodged by the concussion.
  Doc Savage kept out of the fight. This was ideal stuff. Two gangs of  enemies working on each other.
  The bronze man chose a moment when comparative silence reigned. He  raised his voice, shouted. He used
  the old Mayan language, a tongue  which was understood by few persons in the civilized world besides
  himself and his aids.
  "Where are you?" he roared in Mayan.
  Then he dived into shadows and waited for an answer. But there was  little danger of his attracting attention in
  the confusion of the raid.  His Mayan words were probably mistaken for the strangled cry of someone  badly
  injured.
  An answer came. Monk’s voice.
  "Here we are, but darned if I know where," was the essence of Monk’s  shout. And he added, "What the heck
  is going on?"
  The raiders had topped the steps, had separated, going down various  passages. The big pyramid interior was
  honeycombed with rooms and  corridors, although the roof of not a few of these had fallen in.
  Doc leaped the last of the steps, turned left. Monk’s voice had come  from that direction.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XIX. RAIDERS
  78
  
  Someone stepped out of a side passage, turned on a flashlight, and  struck with a knife. The bronze man,
  twisting, avoided the blade. He  got hold of the wrist, turned with it, bending; there was gritting of  breaking
  bone, and the knife wielder slammed against the stone wall,  then sank to his knees, screeching.
  "Monk!" Doc shouted.
  "This way," called Monk.
  It was a left turn, this time. Doc made it, found a barred door.  There was no guard�he had gone to fight the
  attack.
  The door was secured with a ponderous bar−and−chain arrangement  which required no key, although it could
  not possibly be undone from  the inside. Doc worked with the chain, gave the bar a shove, then  shouldered the
  door open.
  "All of you here?" he demanded.
  "Yes," Monk said. "Including Dave Robertson."
  "All right," Doc rapped. "Jones, get Fiesta and her brother  outdoors. Hide in the jungle. Monk and Ham, you
  help me."
  Jones rushed away with Fiesta and Dave Robertson, the latter needing  help, because he proved to be very
  weak.
  "What’s going on?" Monk barked.
  It was a fight, obviously, because shot sounds were exploding  repeatedly, and men were yelling. But who was
  fighting whom? That was  what had Monk puzzled.
  Doc said, "The killers who were hired to wipe out the new rubber  plant are making a raid."
  Monk gasped his astonishment.
  "So you had it all figured out!" the homely chemist muttered.
  DOC SAVAGE took from his trouser pockets several small grenades. He  divided these among Monk, Ham
  and himself.
  "These are gas," he said. "The gas works through the pores of the  skin, as well as by being inhaled, so masks
  would do us no good, even  if you two had any. Scatter these grenades. Then get out. The gas will  do the rest.
  The stuff produces unconsciousness in a short time. Also,  it is very irritating. Painful enough to take the fight
  all out of  these two gangs."
  They worked their way to the head of the stairway which the bronze  man had ascended. They threw the
  grenades in all directions, Monk  lighting matches�Jones, Fiesta and her brother had taken the gasoline
  lantern from the cell�to furnish light.
  Then they ran. There were shrieks above them, piercing cries. The  shooting became more sporadic.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XIX. RAIDERS
  79
  
  "Hurry!" Doc ordered. "They will try to make a break from the ruin,  probably."
  Ham stumbled, fell the last few steps, got up saying things he had  not learned in Harvard, and they dived
  outside.
  Doc ignited flares. They were small magnesium affairs, not as large  as shotgun cartridges, but for a few
  minutes they would give an intense  white light. The bronze man tossed one of the flares down in front of  the
  opening. He handed others to Monk and Ham, directing, "Scatter them  around the pyramid!"
  Monk raced one direction, Ham the other, scattering the flares.  Light that rivaled the daylight sun grew,
  casting fabulously grotesque  shadows.
  Men began diving out of the pyramid. Raiders and defenders. Some of  them barely got beyond the opening
  when they collapsed, screeching, and  slowly became unconscious from the effects of the gas on their skin.
  Many others must have dropped inside, because hardly more than half a  dozen escaped into the open air.
  Of that half dozen, four dropped. But two of them, one the leader of  the raiders, apparently had been affected
  very slightly. These two fled.
  Doc Savage followed them.
  Chapter XX. THE BIRDS THAT KILLED
  THE bronze man, nearly losing his quarry in the wilderness of stone  that was the ruin, surrendered sufficient
  control of his emotions to  rage inwardly at the way immersion in the water had sapped his physical  strength.
  For moments, the two fleeing men were out of sight. Then he  discovered them, just entering the jungle, and
  raced toward the spot.
  Sounds told him that the two men were fighting their way through the  tropical growth, and simplified
  following them. Doc endeavored to climb  into the maze of entwining boughs of the upper forest, and travel in
  that fashion, but after narrowly missing one bad fall, he gave that up.
  Shortly, however, there was a path, crudely hacked through the  tangle. He made better time. But so did his
  quarry.
  Their destination was not far away. It was a river. Not a large one,  but wide enough that, with the wind from
  the proper direction, a plane  could be landed upon it.
  There was a stockade of thorn brush, and in the middle of that,  several small tents and one very large one, all
  camouflaged by  coverings of green boughs lashed to frameworks of poles. The two men  had lighted a
  gasoline lantern that hung in the stockade, and this  threw illumination over the scene.
  Light from the gasoline lantern barely touched the plane that was  lashed to the river bank. The plane had been
  covered with fresh−cut  boughs and leafy vines to hide it from the air.
  The two men were madly at work tearing the camouflaging off the  plane.
  Doc Savage, conscious of his own depleted physical strength, made no  effort to close with them. He had two
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XX. THE BIRDS THAT KILLED
  80
  
  of the gas grenades left. He  hurled them both, one after the other, onto the bank beside the plane.
  The gas poured out of the grenades, distinctly visible stuff�it had  a vile, greenish hue�and spread in a cloud
  that slowly enveloped the  plane.
  One man screamed. Then the other. They tumbled off the ship, and  beating at their chests, pounding other
  parts of their bodies, they  stumbled about. Suddenly gripped with the same hope for escape, they  plunged into
  the jungle, fighting their way through the thorny bushes  and matted creepers.
  After a while, both collapsed and stopped shrieking.
  Doc Savage went to them. With a stick, twisted into the clothing of  each in turn, he dragged them to the river
  and immersed them, washing  away the gas that might be in their clothing, to some extent.
  Then he bound them, using their belts, and strips ripped from their  clothing.
  He left them lying there, because he did not feel up to carrying  them, and went back to the thorn stockade
  wherein stood the small tents  and the large ones.
  Later, Monk and Ham came out of the jungle.
  "DON’T go near the plane," Doc warned. "There may be some of the gas  around it still."
  Monk nodded. He said, "We can use that plane to fly out of this  place. I think everything is cleaned up back
  there at the pyramid. We  left Jones and the Robertsons to watch things."
  Ham asked, "Say, where were you all afternoon, Doc?"
  The bronze man told them. "I might have overdone it," he admitted.  "But those skull−colored birds were
  certain death, and I wanted to take  no chances. So I remained in the lagoon."
  "How come they didn’t use the birds in that raid?" Monk countered.
  "They are falcons. Large ones, but falcons, nevertheless," Doc  explained. "They cannot see when a night is as
  dark as this one, any  better than a man can."
  Monk looked about uneasily. "Are them birds around here anywhere  now?"
  Doc said, "We might see what is in the big tent."
  Ham, a queer expression on his face, lifted the gasoline lantern off  the peg on which it hung, and sidled over
  to the big tent. He cast the  light inside, then dropped the tent flap and jumped back.
  "Whew!" he gasped. "The tent is full of them!"
  Monk said, "I think I’ll leave here."
  "The birds are in cages, you homely baboon," Ham explained, although  he sounded somewhat nervous
  himself.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XX. THE BIRDS THAT KILLED
  81
  
  "In cages, huh?" Monk swallowed. "Well, let’s look."
  They entered the big tent.
  The cages, larger than chicken coops, but of about the same  construction as the native coops that were made
  of rattan and bamboo,  stood stacked one on the other. A very few were empty. The others held  falcons.
  Doc Savage spoke quietly. "Falcons, as you know, can be trained," he  said. "They are used for hunting,
  falconry being a fairly well−known  sport. These particular birds, however, were simply trained to go to a
  human being and alight upon him or her, if it was possible."
  "I don’t see how that would kill anybody," Monk said.
  "Furthermore, these are ordinary falcons. They’re not that skull  color�"
  Ham interrupted, "Down at this end! Here’s some of them that are the  gray color."
  Doc Savage and Monk went to the coops that Ham had found. On the  floor nearby stood a container of metal.
  Monk opened this. It was full  of grayish substance, obviously the compound into which the bird had  been
  dipped.
  Monk examined the gray stuff.
  "Some kind of thermit compound!" the homely chemist explained.
  "Thermit?" Ham muttered. "You mean�"
  "The same stuff the munitions makers use in incendiary bombs," Monk  advised. "The stuff was originally
  compounded out of powdered aluminum  and a metallic oxide, although that’s been improved. It burns with
  terrific heat. But"�Monk scratched his head�"how was the stuff set  afire?"
  Ham picked up one of a collection of tiny watchlike contrivances  that lay in a box close at hand.
  "Would these do it?" he asked.
  Monk examined the gadget. "Sure. Sure it would. This is a timer,  with a tiny firing device that will go off
  whenever it is set."
  Ham said, "Then that explains how these infernal birds came to burn  up. But what was the idea of them
  burning? It seems like a fantastic  precaution to take."
  Doc Savage answered that, speaking in a low voice. "No doubt it was  to destroy evidence and add a note of
  mysterious horror to the murders  committed by the birds. Such a murder method would be highly effective
  among superstitious natives."
  "It was kind of effective on me," Monk admitted gloomily. "Only I  don’t see yet how the birds killed
  anybody."
  "Gas," the bronze man said.
  "Eh?"
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XX. THE BIRDS THAT KILLED
  82
  
  "Let’s look around. We may find the device."
  The gas container was made of aluminum, so that it did not differ  greatly in color from the falcons, once they
  were smeared with the  thermit compound and released. It was larger than they had expected,  and ingeniously
  equipped with a wire trip, so that, once the falcon  alighted, the gas would be released.
  The gas itself was an almost instantaneously lethal variety�they  found it in bottles, in a suitcase padded with
  cotton�and a type that  was used to some extent in warfare. (When the descriptions of poisons  and deadly
  gasses which appear in the Doc Savage stories seem  incomplete, it is done deliberately. There are always
  such gasses and  poisons in existence, but naturally we do not identify them. We have no  desire to aid
  criminals with such information.)
  "Naturally," Doc reminded, "since the victims were burned after  death, except for the one case of that native
  in the strawstack shack  in Arizona, whose body was spirited away, the fact that it was a gas  death remained
  unknown."
  THEY went back to the ruin, joining Hobo Jones, Fiesta and her  brother. The gas which Doc Savage had
  used had cleared out of the  exterior portion of the ruin, but the stuff still made the interior of  the pyramid
  untenable. The flares had burned out, of course, but Jones  had gathered dry brush, and lighted a number of
  fires, which furnished  illumination.
  Hobo Jones was sitting on a rock beside Fiesta. It appeared that  Jones, who was a young man that acted upon
  an idea when he got one, had  lost no time. There seemed to be an understanding between Fiesta and  himself.
  "We’ll wait for the gas to clear," Doc said. "Those fellows inside  won’t be regaining consciousness soon."
  Because there was nothing else to do at the moment, the bronze man  climbed to the upper terraces, where
  grew the vegetables with the  yellowish fruit�the new rubber−producing plant. He was interested in  the plants.
  Dave Robertson accompanied him, and pointed out the fact that he had  a small laboratory in a stone chamber
  that opened off the terrace. They  retired to this to discuss the rubber−producing development.
  Doc Savage went over the record of Dave Robertson’s experiments,  studying the processes that had been
  used. The bronze man became  thoughtful. He did some experimenting with the retorts and chemicals  with
  which the sticky pulp of the plants were to be refined into rubber.
  Then Doc did some figuring on paper.
  "I’m afraid," the bronze man said thoughtfully, "that this is going  to be somewhat disappointing. Here are
  your refining cost estimates"�he  indicated his penciled figures�"as compared with the actual cost of
  producing crude rubber in the usual fashion. Your rubber is more  expensive to produce."
  Dave Robertson nodded grimly. "Yes, but we believe we could develop  cheaper refining methods."
  "You might," the bronze man admitted. He considered the subject. The  moon had come out, and he walked
  out on the terrace and stood  contemplating the tumbled vastness of the ruin.
  Then, abruptly, the bronze man explained that he would furnish funds  for further experiment. "But you will
  need at least one able−bodied  assistant," he advised.
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XX. THE BIRDS THAT KILLED
  83
  
  Dave Robertson grinned. He pointed at Hobo Jones, who was sitting on  the rock, suspiciously close to Fiesta.
  "How would that fellow Jones do?" Dave Robertson asked.
  "Fine," Doc said. "Hobo Jones has a job, although he doesn’t know it  yet. From the looks of the situation, a
  job is exactly what he is  wishing most that he had."
  MONK came climbing up to them. Monk had something on his mind.
  "There’s one thing about this that I can’t make jell, Doc," the  homely chemist explained. "That’s the murder
  back there on the liner,  when we were crossing the Pacific. The murder of Court Tottingham."
  "That," Doc said, "was a device to mislead us."
  "Eh?"
  "Court Tottingham wanted us to find Fenter Bain and wipe him out.  That is why he gave us the photograph of
  this ruin with the map on the  back."
  "Yeah, but�"
  "Court Tottingham," Doc explained, "was playing perfectly safe. He  wanted us to finish Fenter Bain off, then
  Tottingham no doubt figured  on stepping in and getting rid of us, or at least destroying the secret  of the new
  rubber plant."
  Monk scratched his bullet−shaped head. His homely face was a study.
  "I’m still without savvy," he declared. "Court Tottingham was  murdered."
  "No."
  "Eh?"
  "Court Tottingham murdered one of Fenter Bain’s men, and made it  appear to be himself so as to mislead
  us," Doc said.
  "What makes you so sure," asked Monk, "that you ain’t wrong?"
  Then the bronze man led Monk to the spot where lay the two men who  had fled from the pyramid, and
  pointed out to the homely chemist the  undeniable fact that one of them was Court Tottingham.
  THE END
   THE FLAMING FALCONS
  Chapter XX. THE BIRDS THAT KILLED
  84
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/R/Robeson, Kenneth/076 The Flaming Falcons.pdf