Only a few minutes ago, they had received rush orders from the Gray Spider to come here and pick up the trail of the bronze man.
"We're to croak 'im if we get the chance!" muttered Lefty. "We might cut down on him right now!"
"Too risky!" Bugs hastily protested. "There's a cop in the next block."
They watched Doc Savage enter his roadster.
Lefty glanced about uneasily, as if to make sure no one was near, then growled: "I wonder if the bronze guy found anything to show we scragged old Topper Beed?"
"We didn't leave no clues!" snarled Bugs.
Doc Savage was unaware of the two murderers of Topper Beed crouched in their car. The morning sun shone on the windshield of their machine in such a manner that the reflection made it impossible to see inside.
Doc's roadster carried him over to Canal Street, thence southward. It halted shortly before a concern which sold dictaphones.
Lefty and Bugs, following discreetly far to the rear, saw Doc enter the establishment.
"I wish to purchase several dictaphone recording cylinders," Doc informed a clerk. "I wish also to use a dictaphone for several minutes."
It was an unusual request, but the clerk complied.
Seating himself at a machine used for demonstration purposes, Doc clipped on one of his new records and proceeded to dictate a long message.
No one heard his voice. The machine recorded smoothly. Doc gave order after order, together with detailed instructions on how they were to be carried out.
He was delivering commands to his men—for he intended to dispatch the records to them by messenger.
"Keep in mind," he finished, "that should one word of these instructions reach the Gray Spider, it might easily mean immediate death and destruction to us all."
Doc made his records into a small package. Down the street a few doors, he entered a telegraph office and engaged a messenger.
On a paper, he wrote the name of a hotel and a room number. It was the hotel to which he had directed his four pals—the directions having been on the message he had left in invisible ink at the Danielsen & Haas offices. Monk, Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny would be waiting there.
The messenger stood on the curb and watched the giant bronze man enter his roadster and drive toward the Danielsen & Haas building.
WHEN Doc Savage was out of sight, the messenger got astride his bicycle. He carried his package carefully. He had been instructed to take pains not to drop it.
He eyed the address of the hotel, then tucked the paper in his tunic pocket. He pedaled on his errand.
Traffic was heavy on Canal Street. The messenger decided his shortest route was a left turn on Claiborne Avenue.
He veered over.
Suddenly an automobile whipped in front of his bike. He trod his coaster brake. No use! He hit the car head-on. His front wheel crumpled. He took a dive over the handlebars and banged his head against the car. Limp and unconscious, he dropped to the pavement.
By a miracle, the package he carried did not fall heavily enough to shatter the well-padded records inside.
"Nifty work Bugs!" chuckled one of the men in the car.
"Hold everything, Lefty!" rasped the other. "I'll grab the package the kid was carryin'!"
"Get the paper we saw him put in his coat pocket, too!"
The pair of crooked detectives had welcomed the chance to shift their shadowing activities from Doc Savage to the defenseless messenger boy. All too well, they remembered what the bronze giant had done to the four swampmen who had tried to slay him. They did not like the shadowing job, so they had taken a chance that whatever the messenger was carrying would be important enough to point to a reason for losing Doc Savage—for they would have to show the Gray Spider a good excuse.
Bugs got the package, and the paper from the messenger's pocket. He sprang into the car. The machine raced away.
"Hey, lookit!" exclaimed Bugs, opening the package. "Dictaphone records!"
"They got anything on 'em?"
"Guess so."
Lefty quickly turned their car to the curb as he caught sight of another office-supply concern.
"The bronze guy must've rented a machine to make 'em!" he declared. "What's to keep us from rentin' one to hear 'em?"
"That's usin' the old think box!" complimented Bugs.
They entered the office-supply establishment, drew a clerk aside, and made their needs known. A moment later, they were bending over a transcribing machine. A record was fitted on the cylinder.
The headset consisted of two receivers. They divided it between them. Lefty started the machine. They held their breath. The rotating record, not yet to the message, made a low hiss-hiss in their ears.
Then it began to talk to them!
A dazed expression seized their faces. It was as though somebody had suddenly hit them in the head with a hammer.
They couldn't understand a word they were hearing!
Doc Savage had dictated in a language not one person in a hundred million knew—the tongue of the ancient Mayan civilization! Doc and his men had learned this language from pure-blooded descendants of the ancient race of Maya—from the folk who resided in the lost valley in Central America, and who kept Doc supplied with gold.
"What're we gonna do now?" Bugs growled.
"Get these to the Gray Spider," Lefty decided.
The unsavory pair hurried toward the old French quarter, the bundle of records tucked under Lefty's arm.
THE French quarter is the most ancient section of New Orleans. Although only a short distance from the new business district of skyscrapers, the French quarter is probably one of the most unique features of any American city. It is more remarkable even than the Chinatown of San Francisco.
Stepping into the French quarter is like stepping into an ancient part of Paris. Old buildings and quaint streets characterize the place. Overhanging balconies were plentiful.
Lefty and Bugs sidled furtively into one of the shabbiest of the buildings. They clumped down a shadowy passage. A door opened after they had mumbled their identity.
The shoddy, ill-smelling room in which they found themselves, was fitted with tables, rickety metal chairs, and a bar. Perhaps a dozen slovenly individuals were present, all men.
One of the yellowish-brown monkeylike men sat at a table. Lefty and Bugs gave him their package and the paper bearing the name of the hotel.
"Get this to the Gray Spider," Lefty directed. "Tell him we think it's important. Tell him we quit trailin' the bronze guy to grab it. And ask him what he wants us to do now."
Without a word, the monkey man departed with package and paper.
"I'd kinda like to follow that swamp snipe and see where the Gray Spider's got his hang-out here in New Orleans," leered Lefty.
"If you ask me, it wouldn't be healthy!" mumbled Bugs. "You saw what old Topper Beed got for knowin' too much!"
"You mean what we gave him!" Lefty chuckled coldly. "But he got hisn because he was spillin' what he knew."
"How'd Topper Beed happen to get wise to the Gray Spider?" questioned Bugs. "How'd he learn who the Gray Spider is?"
"Topper Beed was buyin' the stolen sawmills the Gray Spider's men were sellin'. But he got suspicious about the deals. He began to snoop around. He went to Danielsen & Haas with what he knew. And he finally found out too much."
"I'll say he did!" Bugs leered.
Several cigarettes were smoked by the pair in the wait that followed.
The yellowish-brown monkey man reappeared in the vile den.
"Gray Spider plentee much mad!" he growled. "Vat yo' send in de package vas no good to heem. Hees say yo' one pair plentee fools!"
Lefty and Bugs took this silently. They were getting off easy, for they had openly disobeyed the Gray Spider's orders in not at least trying to kill the mighty bronze man.
They gathered the Gray Spider had not been able to understand the mysterious lingo inscribed on the dictaphone records.
Another of the monkeylike swamp men shuffled in. He carried a cheap, new-looking black handbag. This he placed on the table.
"What's that?" Lefty demanded.
"Don't ask so many questions!" growled the swamp denizen. "Yo' ees to do mo' work. Oui!And yo' bettair not fall down on dis next job!"
He continued to speak. At times his gibberish was so rapid that Lefty and Bugs had to swear at him to slow him down understandably.
The two crooked lumber detectives began to get pale at the gills as the significance of the Gray Spider's orders dawned. They perspired freely.
"Jimminy!" Bugs whined. "I don't like this!"
"Me either!" grunted Lefty.
"Gray Spider order yo' do dese t'ings!" snapped the monkey man. "Yo' want me tell heem yo' say hees can go jump een river?"
"Nix, nix!" Lefty said hastily. "We'll go through with it."
"Git at it, den!" ordered the monkey man.