"We can hardly take it in the plane, due to the terrific air currents," Doc pointed out.
The elderly Mayan sovereign smiled. "We have donkeys here in the Valley of the Vanished. I will simply have a number of them loaded with gold and dispatched to your banker at Blanco Grande."
Doc was surprised at the simplicity of the scheme. "But the warlike natives in the surrounding mountains — they will never let a pack train through."
"In that you are mistaken," chuckled King Chaac. "The natives are of Mayan ancestry. They know we are here; they know why. And for centuries it has been their fighting which has kept this valley lost to white men. Oh, yes, they will let the pack train through. And no white man will ever know from whence it came. And they will let others through as the years pass."
"Is there that much gold?" Doc inquired.
But King Chaac only smiled secretively and gave no other answer.
The Red Death struck in the middle of that afternoon. A cluster of excited Mayans about a stone house drew Monk's curious attention. Monk looked inside.
A Mayan was sprawled on a stone bench. His yellow skin was mottled, feverish, and he was calling for water.
On his neck were vile red patches.
"The Red Death!" Monk muttered in a horror-filled voice. He ran for Doc, and found him politely listening to attractive Princess Monja. The young lady had finally cornered Doc alone.
Doc raced to the plane, got his instrument case.
Entering the Mayan's stone dwelling, Doc became at once the thing for which he was eminently fitted above all others — a great doctor and surgeon. From the highest credited medical universities and the greatest hospitals in America, from the best that Europe had to offer, Doc garnered his fabulous fund of knowledge of medicine and surgery. He had studied with the master surgeons in the costliest clinics in the world. And he had conducted unnumbered experiments of his own when he had advanced beyond the greatest master's ability to teach.
With his instruments, his supersensitive ear, his featherllght touch; Doc examined the Mayan.
"What ails him?" Monk wanted to know.
"It escapes me as yet," Doc was forced to admit. "Obviously it is the same thing that seized my father. That means it was administered to this man in some fashion by that devil who is behind all our troubles. Whoever he is, the fiend must be in the valley now. Probably the blue airplane brought him and dropped him by parachute at night."
In that Doc's reasoning could not have been more accurate had he witnessed the arrival of the enemy.
At this juncture Long Tom ran up.
"The Red Death!" he puffed. "They're collapsing with it all over the city!"
Doc administered an opiate to the first Mayan to be stricken to ease his pain, then visited a second sufferer. He questioned each closely on where he had been, what he had eaten. Four more Mayans he asked the same thing.
Deduction then told him how the Red Death was being spread!
"The water supply!" he guessed with exactness.
He showed Long Tom, Johnny, Ham, and Renny how to administer the opiates that lessened suffering.
"Monk, your knowledge of chemistry is going to be in need," he declared. "Come on."
Securing test tubes for obtaining samples of the water, Doc and Monk hurried toward the gleaming yellow pyramid.
Although the epidemic of Red Death had been under way less than an hour, the cult of red-fingered warriors had been making full use of the panic it engendered. They were falling over themselves to spread word that the disease was a punishment inflicted upon the Mayans for permitting Doc and his friends to remain in the Valley of the Vanished.
Ominous mutterings were arising. Blue-girdled men everywhere harangued madly, seeking to fan the flames of hatred.
"And just when things were sailing smooth for us!" Monk muttered.
Doc and Monk reached the golden pyramid and started up. Instantly a loud roar of anger lifted from a crowd of Mayans who had followed them. The crowd was composed of about half red-fingered fighting men.
They made threatening gestures, indicating Doc and Monk should not ascend the pyramid. It was an altar, inviolate to their gods, they screamed. Only Mayans could ascend without bringing bad luck.
It was the red-fingered men who howled the loudest.
"We're going to have a fight on our hands if we go up," Monk whispered.
It was Doc who solved the delicate situation. He did it simply. He beckoned to attractive Princess Monja, gave her the test tubes, and told her to dip water from whatever sort of a tank or pool was on top of the pyramid.
The confidence the young woman showed Doc did its bit to allay the anger of the Mayans.
Back at the stone house assigned himself and his friends, Doc set to work.
He had brought a compact quantity of apparatus. And Monk had his tiny, wonderfully efficient chemical laboratory. Doc combined the two, went to work analyzing the water.
He had trouble with the Mayans before he had hardly started. Two of the homeliest of the ugly, red-fingered gentry came dancing and screaming into the place. They had rubbed some evil-smelling lotion on themselves, and the odor angered Doc, who depended a great deal on his sense of smell in his analyzing.
Doc kicked both warriors bodily outdoors. For a moment it looked like the house was going into a state of siege. Hundreds of Mayans shrieked and waved arms and weapons outside. It was astounding the number of spears and terrible clubs they had unearthed.
But memory of what had happened to the gang of warriors who had attacked Doc the day before made them hesitate.
"Monk," Doc questioned, "did you bring that gas you made up in my laboratory in New York? The stuff that paralyzes without harming, I mean."
"I sure did," Monk assured him. "I'll go get it."
Doc heaved the heavy stone door shut and continued his analyzing.
Rocks began to bounce against the stone walls and the flat stone roof. A couple whizzed in the square window.
The yelling has risen to a bedlam.
Suddenly the note of the howling changed from rage to fear. It diminished greatly in volume. Doc looked out the window
Monk had broken a bottle of his gas where the wind carried it over the besieging Mayans. Fully half of the malefactors were stiff and helpless on the earth. They would be thus for possibly two hours, then the effects would wear off.
This eased the tension for a time, enabling Doc to continue his work undisturbed.
Test after test he ran on the water. He had very early isolated a tiny quantity of red, viscous fluid which he had determined was some sort of germ culture. The question was to find out what kind of germs.
There was not much time. His father had succumbed less than three days after being stricken. Probably that was about the time required for the ghastly disease to prove fatal.
An hour dragged past. Another. Doc worked tirelessly, with every ounce of his enormous concentration.
The humor of the Mayans rapidly became worse. Johnny, Ham, and Renny were driven to the stone house where Doc worked. They were joined by elderly King Chaac and entrancing Princess Monja. Of all the Mayans, the faith of these two in Doc remained utterly unshaken.
However, there were other Mayans who remained aloft from the turmoil — people who would probably side with Doc when the show-down came.
Doc worked without hardly lifting his head all that afternoon. He labored the night straight through, his experiments lighted by electric bulbs Long Tom fixed up.
Another dawn had come before Doc straightened from the stone bench where he had placed his apparatus.
"Long Tom!" he called.