there.
Monk looked like he understood, then his jaw fell. 'Huh!'
The floor bricks were all red!
Doc plugged the ultra-violet apparatus into a light socket. He switched off the laboratory lights. Deliberately, he played the black-light rays across the brick floor. The darkness was intense.
And suddenly one brick was shining with an unholy red luminance. The brick was the lid of a secret little cavity in the floor, and the elder Savage had treated it with some substance that had the property of glowing red under the black-light beams.
From the secret cavity, Doc lifted a packet of papers wrapped securely in an oilskin cloth that looked like a fragment of slicker. Ham clicked on the lights. They gathered around, eagerly waiting.
Doc opened the papers. They were very official looking, replete with gaudy seals. And they were printed in Spanish.
One at a time, as he finished glancing over them, Doc passed the papers to Ham. The astute lawyer studied them with great interest. At last Doc was completely through the papers. He looked at Ham.
'These papers are a concession from the government of Hidalgo,' Ham declared. 'They give to you several hundred square miles of land in Hidalgo, providing you pay the government of Hidalgo one hundred thousand dollars yearly and one fifth of everything you remove from this land. And the concession holds for a period of ninety-nine years.'
Doc nodded. 'Notice something else, Ham! Those papers are made out to me. Me, mind you! Yet they were executed twenty years ago. I was only a kid then.'
'You know what I think?' Ham demanded.
'Same thing I do, I'll bet!' Doc replied. 'These papers are the title to the legacy my father left me. The legacy is something he discovered twenty years ago.'
'But what is the legacy?' Monk wanted to know. Doc shrugged. 'I haven't the slightest idea, brothers. But you can bet it's something well worth while. My father was never mixed up in piker deals. I have heard him treat a million-dollar transaction as casually as though he were buying a cigar.'
Pausing, Doc looked steadily at each of his men in turn. The flaky gold of his eyes shimmered strange lights. He seemed to read the thoughts of each.
'I'm going after this heritage my father left,' he said at length. 'I don't need to ask — you fellows are with me!'
'And how!' grinned Renny. And the others echoed his sentiment.
Planting the papers securely in a chamois money belt about his powerful waist, Doc walked back into the library, thence into the other room.
'Did the Mayan race hang out in Hidalgo?' Renny asked abruptly, eying his enormous fist.
Johnny, fiddling with his glasses that had the magnifying lens, took it upon himself to answer.
'The Mayans were scattered over a large part of Central America,' he said. 'But the Itzans, the clan whose dialect our late prisoner spoke, were situated in Yucatan during the height of their civilization. However, the republic of Hidalgo is not far away, being situated among the rugged mountains farther inland.'
'I'm betting this Mayan and Doc's heritage are tied up somewhere,' declared Long Tom, the electrical wizard.
Doc stood facing the window. With his back to the light, his strong bronze face was not sharply outlined except when he turned slightly to the right or left to speak. Then the light play seemed to accentuate its remarkable qualities of character.
'The thing for us to do now is corner the man who was giving the Mayan orders,' he said slowly.
'Huh — you think there's more of your enemies?' Renny demanded.
'The Mayan showed no signs of understanding the English language,' Doc elaborated. 'Whoever left the warning in this room wrote it in English, and was educated enough to understand the ultra-violet apparatus. That man was in the building when the shot was fired, because the elevator operator said no one came in between the time we left and got back. Yes, brothers, I don't think we're out of the woods yet.'
Doc went over to the double-barreled elephant rifle which had been in possession of the Mayan. He inspected the manufacturer's number. He grasped the telephone.
'Get me the firearms manufacturing firm of Webley Scott, Birmingham, England.' he told the phone operator 'Yes, of course — England! Where the Prince of Wales lives.'
To his friends, Doc explained: 'Perhaps the firm that made the rifle will know to whom they sold it.'
'Somebody will cuss over in England when he's called out of bed by long-distance phone from America,' Renny chuckled.
'You forget the five hours' time difference,' clipped waspish Ham. 'It is now early morning in England! They'll just be getting up.'
Doc was facing the window again, apparently lost in thought. Actually, while standing there a moment before, he had felt vaguely that something was out of place about the window.
Then he got it! The mortar at one end of the granite slab which formed the window sill was fresher than on the other side. The strip of mortar was no wider than a pencil mark, yet Doc noticed it. He leaned out the window.
A fine wire, escaping from the room through the mortared crack, ran downward! It entered a window below.
Doc flashed back into the room. His supple, sensitive, but steel-strong hands explored. He brought to light a tiny microphone of the type radio announcers call lapel mikes.
'Somebody has been listening.' His powerful voice throbbed through the room. 'In the room below! Let's look into that!'
No puff of wind could have gone out of the room and down the stairs more speedily than Doc made it. The distance was sixty feet, and Doc had covered it all before his men were out of the upstairs room. And they had moved as quickly as they could.
Whipping over where the wall could shelter him from ordinary bullets, Doc tried the doorknob. Locked! He exerted what for him was a mild pressure. Wood splintered, brass mechanism of the lock gritted and tore — and the door hopped ajar.
A pistol crashed in the room. The bullet came close enough to Doc's bronzed features that he felt the cold stir of air. A second lead missile followed. The powder noise was a great bawl of sound. Both bullets chopped plaster off the elaborately decorated corridor wall.
Within the room, a door slammed.
Doc instantly slid inside. Sure enough, his quarry had retreated to a connecting office.
All this had taken flash parts of a second — Doc's men were only now clamoring at the door.
'Keep back!' Doc directed. He liked to fight his own battles. And there seemed to be only one man opposing him.
Doc crossed the office, treading new-looking cheap carpet. He circled a second-hand oak desk with edges blackened where cigarette stubs had been placed carelessly. He tried the connecting door.
It was also locked — but gave like wet cardboard before his powerful shove. Alert, almost certain a bullet would meet him, he doubled down close to the floor. He knew he could bob into view and back before the man inside could pull trigger.
But the place was empty!
Once, twice, three times, Doc counted his own heartbeats. Then he saw the explanation.
A stout silken cord, with hardwood rods about the size of fountain pens tied every foot or so for handholds, draped out of the open window. The end of the cord was tied to a stout radiator leg. And a tense jerking showed a man was going down it.
With a single leap, Doc was at the window. He looked down.
Of the man descending the cord, little could be told. In the streaming darkness he was no more than a black lump.
Doc drew back, whipped out his flashlight. When he played it down the cord, the man was gone!
The fellow had ducked into a window.
The flash went into Doc's pocket. Doc himself clambered over the window sill. Grasping the silken cord, he
