descended. Thanks to the coordination of his great muscles, Doc negotiated the cord just about as fast as a man could run.
He passed the first window. It was closed, the office beyond darkened and deserted-looking.
Doc went on down. He had not seen what window the quarry had disappeared into. The second window was also closed. And the third! Doc knew then that he had passed the right window. The man could not have gone this far down the cord.
It was typical of Doc that he did not give even a glance to what was below — a sheer fall of hundreds of feet. So far downward did the brick-and-glass wall extend that it seemed to narrow with distance until it was only a yard or so across. And the street was wedge-shaped at the bottom, as though cut with a great, sharp knife.
Doc had climbed a yard upward when the silk cord gave a violent jerk. He looked up.
A window had opened. A man had shoved a chair through it, and was pushing on the cord so as to swing Doc out away from the building. The murk of the night hid the man's face. But it was obvious he was Doc's quarry.
Like a rock on the end of the silken rope, Doc was swung out several feet from the building. He would have to chance to grab a window sill.
The man above flashed a hand for the cord. A long knife glistened in the hand.
Chapter 6. WORKING PLANS
At no time had Doc Savage ever put his ability to think like chain lightning to better use than he did now. In the fractional split of time that it took his golden eyes to register the deadly menace of that knife, he formulated a plan of action.
He simply let go completely of the silken cord!
This, in spite of the sheer fall of more than eighty stories directly below him — with not a possible chance of saving himself by clutching a projecting piece of masonry. This building was of the modernistic architecture which does not go in for trick balconies and carved ledges.
But Doc knew what he was doing. And it was a thing that called for iron nerve and stupendous strength and quickness of movement.
The silken cord, going abruptly slack before the chair the man above pushed against it nearly caused the would-be murderer to pitch headlong out of the window. The fellow dropped both the chair and his knife and by a wild grab, saved himself from the fall he had meant for Doc.
Doc, with a maneuver little short of marvelous, caught the end of the silken cord as it snaked past. A drop of a few feet, which his remarkable arm muscles easily cushioned, and he was swinging close to a window sill, none the worse for his narrow escape.
Doc stepped easily to the window ledge.
Not a moment too soon! The man above had recovered and, desperate, had employed a small penknife to cut the silken line. It slithered down past Doc, writhing and twisting into fantastic shapes as it dropped those eighty stories to the street.
The window on the ledge of which Doc found himself was locked. He popped the pane inward, and sprang into the office. He lunged across the room.
The door literally jumped out of its casing, lock and all, when he took hold of it. He halted in the corridor, stumped.
His attuned ear could detect the windy noise of an elevator dropping downward. He knew it was his quarry in flight!
A couple of floors above, Renny was yelling, his voice more than ever like thunder deep in a cave. 'Doc — what's become of you?'
Doc paid no attention. He ran across the corridor to the elevator doors. So quickly that he seemed to spring directly to it he found the cage shaft that was in operation. His fist came back, jumped forward so swiftly as to defy the eye.
The sound as Doc's knuckles hit the sheet-steel elevator door was like the boom of a hard-swung sledge. An onlooker would have sworn the blow would shatter every bone in his fist. But Doc had learned how to tighten the muscles and tendons in his hands until they were like cushioned steel, capable of withstanding the most violent shock.
As a matter of fact, it was part of Doc's daily two-hour routine of exercises to subject all parts of his great body to terrific blows in order that he might be able always to steel himself against them.
The sheet-metal elevator door caved in like a kicked tin can. In a moment Doc had thrown the safety switch which the door, closing, ordinarily operated. Such safety switches are a part of all elevator doors, so the cage cannot move up or down and leave a door open for some child or careless person to fall through into the shaft. They controlled the motor current.
Many floors below, the elevator car halted, motor circuit broken.
Doc thrust his head in and looked down the shaft. He was disappointed. The elevator car was nearly at the street level.
Five minutes elapsed before the lackadaisical elevator operator got a cage up and ferried Doc and his friends down to the street.
By that time, their quarry was hopelessly gone.
The indifferent elevator chauffeur could not even give them a description of the would-be killer who had fled the building.
There was considerable uproar around to the side of the skyscraper, when a sleepy pedestrian got the shock of his life by failing over the body of the Mayan who had jumped from the window.
Doc Savage told a straightforward story to the police, explaining exactly how the Mayan had come to his death. And such was the power of Doc, and the esteem in which his departed father was held, that the New York police corninissioner gave instant orders that Doc be not molested, and, moreover, that his connection with the suicide be not revealed to the newspapers.
Doc was thus left free to depart for the Central American republic of Hidalgo to investigate the mysterious legacy his father had left him.
Back up in the eighty-sixth-floor lair, Doc made plans and gave orders looking to their execution.
To waspish, quick-thinking Ham, he gave certain of the papers which had been under the brick in the laboratory.
'Your career as a lawyer has given you a wide acquaintance in Washington, Ham,' Doc told him. 'You're intimate with all the high government officials. So you take care of the legal angle of our trip to Hidalgo.'
Ham picked back a cuff to look at an expensive platinum wrist watch. 'A passenger plane leaves New York for Washington in four hours. I'll be on it.' He twirled his black, innocent-looking sword cane.
'Too long to wait,' Doc told him. 'Take my auto-gyro. Fly it down yourself. We'll join you at about nine this morning.'
Ham nodded. He was an expert airplane pilot. So were Renny, Long Tom, Johnny, and Monk. Doc Savage had taught them, managing to imbue them with some of his own genius at the controls.
'Where is your autogyro?' Ham inquired
'At North Beach airport out on Long Island,' Doc retorted.
Ham whipped out, in a hurry to get his share done. 'Renny,' Doc directed, 'whatever instruments you need, take them. Dig up maps. You're our navigator. We are going to fly down, of course.'
'Righto, Doc,' said Renny, his utterly somber, puritanical look showing just how pleased he was.
For this thing promised action. Excitement and adventure aplenty! And how these remarkable men were enamored of that!
'Long Tom,' said Doc Savage, 'yours is the electrical end. You know what we might need.'
'Sure!' Long Tom's pale face was flaming red with excitement.
Long Tom wasn't as unhealthy as he looked. None of the others could remember his suffering a day of illness. Unless the periodic rages, the wild tantrums of temper into which he flew, could be called illness. Long Tom
