The Man of Bronze by Kenneth Robeson Page A

Hidalgo,” Doc said thoughtfully. “It was a part of a large lot of weapons sold to Hidalgo some months ago.”
    Johnny adjusted his glasses which had the magnifying lens. “We’ve got to be careful, Doc,” he said. “If this enemy of ours persists in making trouble, he may try to tamper with our plane.”
    “I have a scheme that will prevent danger from that angle,” Doc assured him.
    Johnny blinked, then started to ask what the scheme was. But he was too slow. Doc had already quitted the office.
    With a grin, Johnny went about his own part of the preparations. He felt supreme confidence in Doc Savage.
    Whatever villainous moves the enemy made against them, Doc was capable of checkmating. Already, Doc was undoubtedly putting into operation some plan which would guarantee them safety in their flight southward.
    The plan to protect their plane would be one worthy of Doc’s vast ingenuity.

Chapter 7
DANGER TRAIL
    T HE rain had stopped.
    A bilious dawn, full of fog, shot through with a chill wind, was crawling along the north shore of Long Island. The big hangars at North Beach airport, just within the boundary line of Mew York City, were like pale-gray, roundbacked boxes in the mist. Electric lights made a futile effort to dispel the sodden gloom.
    A giant tri-motored, all-metal plane stood on the tarmac of the flying field near by. On the fuselage, just back of the bow engine, was emblazoned in firm black letters:
    Clark Savage, Jr.
    One of Doc’s crates!
    Airport attendants, in uniforms made very untidy by mud, grease, and dampness, were busy transferring boxes from a truck to the interior of the big plane. These boxes were of light, but stout, construction, arid on each was imprinted, after the manner of exploration expeditions, the words:
    Clark Savage, Jr., Hidalgo Expedition.
    “What’s a Hidalgo?” a thick-necked mechanic wanted to know.
    “Dunno—a country, I reckon,” a companion greaseball told him.
    The conversation was unimportant, except in that it showed what a little-known country Hidalgo was. Yet the Central American republic was of no inconsiderable size.
    The last box was finally in the plane. An airport worker closed the plane door. Because of the murky dawn and moisture on the windows, it was impossible to see into the pilot’s compartment of the great tri-motor plane.
    A mechanic climbed atop the tin pants over the big wheels, and standing there, cranked the inertia starter of first one motor, then the other. All three big radial engines thundered into life. More than a thousand throbbing horsepower.
    The big plane trembled to the tune of the hammering exhaust stacks. It was not an especially new ship, being about five years old.
    Perhaps one or two attendants about the tarmac heard the sound of another plane which had arrived overhead. Looking up, maybe they saw a huge gray bat of a shape go slicing through the mist. But that was all, and the noise of its great, muffled exhaust was hardly audible above the bawl of the stacks of the old-fashioned tri-motor.
    The tri-motor was moving now. The tail was up, preliminary to taking off. Faster and faster it raced across the tarmac. It slowly took the air.
    Without banking to either side, climbing gently, the big all-metal plane flew possibly a mile.
    An astounding thing happened then.
    The tri-motor ship seemed to turn instantaneously into a gigantic sheet of white-hot flame. This resolved into a monster ball of villainous smoke. Then flipped fragments of the plane and its contents rained downward upon the roofs of Jackson Heights, a conservative residential suburb of New York City.
    So terrific was the explosion that windows were broken in the houses underneath, and shingles even torn off roofs.
    No piece more than a few yards in area remained of the great plane. Indeed, the authorities could never have identified it, had not the airport men known it had just taken off from there.
    No human life could have survived aboard the tri-motor