there is one chap who will walk the straight and narrow in the future.'
'We better catch a shark and take him along if a close look at one reforms our enemies like that!' Monk laughed.
With ropes from a local warehouse, and long, thin palms which Doc hired willing natives to cut, the plane was snaked to dry land.
The news was bad. The floats were badly torn. They didn't have material for patching. Nor was there any in Belize. To save a great deal of work. Doc radioed to Miami for a fresh set. A transport plane brought the pontoons down.
Altogether, four days were lost before they got in shape for the air again.
NOT a morning did Doc miss his exercises. From his youth, he had not neglected the two-hour routine a single time. He did them, although he might have been on the go for many hours previously.
His muscular exercises were similar to ordinary setting-up movements, but infinitely harder, more violent. He took them without apparatus. For instance, be would make certain muscles attempt to lift his arm, while the other muscles strove to hold it down. That way he furthered not only muscular tissue, but control over individual muscles as well. Every part of his great, bronzed body he exercised in this manner.
From the case which held his equipment, Doc took a pad and pencil and wrote a number of several figures. Eyes closed, he extracted the square and cube root of this number in his head, carrying the figures to many decimal places. He multiplied and divided and subtracted the number with various figures. Next he did the same thing with a number of an even dozen figures. This disciplined him in concentration.
Out of the case came an apparatus which made sound waves of all tones, some of a wave length so short or so long as to be inaudible to the normal ear. For several minutes Doc strained to detect these waves inaudible to ordinary people. Years of this had enabled him to hear many of these customarily unheard sounds.
His eyes shut, Doc rapidly identified by the sense of smell several score of different odors, all very vague, each contained in a small vial racked in the case.
The full two hours Doc worked at these and other more intricate exercises.
The morning of the fifth day after arriving in Belize, they took the air for Blanco Grande, capital of Hidalgo.
It was jungle country they flew over, luxuriant, unhealthily rank trees in near solid masses. Lianas and grotesque aerial roots tied these into a solid carpet.
Confident of his motors, Doc flew low enough that they could see tiny parakeets and pairs of yellow-headed parrots feeding off chichem berries that grew in abundance.
Some hours later they were over the border of Hidalgo. It was a typical country of the southern republics. Wedged in between two mighty mountains, traversed in its own right by a half dozen smaller but even more rugged ranges, it was a perfect spot for those whose minds run to revolutions and banditry.
In such localities governments are unstable not so much because of their own lack of equilibrium, but more because of the opportunities offered others, to gather in revolt.
Half of the little valleys of Hidalgo were lost even to the bandits and revolutionists who were most familiar with the terrain. The interior was inhabited by fierce tribes, remnants of once powerful nations, each still a power in its own right, and often engaging in conflict with its neighbors. Woe betide the defenseless white man who found himself wandering about in the wilder part of Hidalgo.
The warlike tribes, the utter inaccessibility of some of the rocky fastnesses, probably explained the large unexplored area Renny had noted on the best maps of Hidalgo.
The capital city itself was a concoction of little, crooked streets, balconied-and-barred houses, ramshackle mud huts, and myriads of colored tile roofs, with the inevitable park for parading in the center of town.
In this case the park was also occupied by the presidential palace and administration buildings. They were imposing structures which showed past governments had been free with the taxpayers' money.
There was a small, shallow lake to the north of town.
On this Doc Savage landed his plane.
Chapter 9. DOC'S WHISTLE
Doc gave some necessary instructions at once. The work fell to Ham, whose understanding of law made him eminently capable.
'Ham, you pay the local secretary of state a visit and check up our rights in this land grant of mine,' Doc directed.
'Maybe somebody had better go along to see he don't steal some hams, or something,' Monk couldn't resist putting in.
Ham bristled instantly.
'Why should I want a ham when I associate with a crowd of them all the time?' he demanded.
'Monk, you'd better accompany Ham as bodyguard,' Doc suggested. 'You two love each other so!'
As a matter of fact, despite the mutual ribbing they were always handing each other, Monk and Ham made a good team of quick thinking and brawn, and they got along perfectly, regardless of the fact that to hear them talk, one would think violence was always impending.
Ham shaved and changed to a natty suit of white flannels before departing. He was sartorial perfection in his white shoes, panama, and innocent-looking black sword cane.
Monk, more to aggravate Ham than anything else, didn't even wash his homely face. He cocked a battered hat over one eye, and with pants seemingly on the point of dropping off his tapering hips, he swaggered behind Ham.
It was later afternoon when they were ushered into the presence of Don Rubio Gorro, Secretary of State of Hidalgo.
Don Rubio was rather short, well knit. His face was entirely too handsome for a man's. His complexion was olive, his lips thin, his nose straight and a bit too sharp. His eyes were dark and limpid as a senorita's.
Don Rubio had ears exactly like those artists put on pictures of the devil. They were very pointed.
Extreme politeness characterized the welcome Don Rubio gave Ham, after the Latin fashion. Monk remained in the background. He didn't think Don Rubio was so hot, taking snap judgment.
And Don Rubio lived up to Monk's impression as soon as Ham made his business known.
'But my dear Senor Brooks,' said Don Rubio smugly, 'our official records contain nothing concerning any concession giving any one named Clark Savage, Jr., even an acre of Hidalgo land, much less some hundreds of square miles. 1 am very sorry, but that is the fact.'
Ham executed a twirl with his cane. 'Was the present government in power twenty years ago?'
'No. This government came into being two years ago.'
'The gang before you probably made the concession grant.' Don Rubio flushed slightly at the subtle inference he was one of a gang.
'In that case!' he said snappishly, 'we have nothing to do with it. You're just out of luck.'
'You mean we have no rights to this land?'
'You most certainly have not!'
HAM'S cane suddenly leveled at a spot directly between Don Rubio Gorro's devil-like ears. 'You've got another guess coming, my friend!'
Don Rubio began: 'There is nothing that — '
'Oh, yes, there is!' Ham poked his cane for emphasis. 'When this government came into power, it was recognized by the United States only on condition that the new regime respect property rights of American citizens in Hidalgo! That right?'
'Well — '
'You bet it's right! And do you know what will happen if you don't live up to that agreement? The U.S. government will sever relations and class you as a plain crowd of bandits. You couldn't obtain credit to buy arms and machinery and other things you need to keep your political opponents in check. Your export trade would be hurt. You would — But you know all that would happen as well as I do. In six months your government would be
