Within the hour, this suspicion crystallized into certainty.

A WEAZENED little yellow man appeared before Doc. No other corsairs were near.

The shriveled fellow extended a bamboo cylinder.

"This belong alongside you," he smirked.

Doc took the bamboo tube. Inside was a rolled sheet of thick, glossy Chinese paper. It bore writing:

The fox is not trapped so easily, bronze man.

I had the foresight to come ashore during the

night and send my boat into the bay with only

the crew aboard, for I did not trust the rabble

you have turned against me.

The gods were with me last night, for I came

upon a plane in the bay at the north end of the

island. Five men loitered near.

And now, bronze man, I have five prisoners

instead of the three whom I held for so long.

Your life is the price which will buy theirs. But

I do not want you to surrender. You are too

dangerous a prisoner.

You will commit suicide, take your own life, in

front of the assembled men of the camp. I will

have observers present. When they bring me word

of your death, your five men will be released.

No doubt you distrust my word. But I assure

you it will be kept this once.

TOM TOO.

Doc read this missive through with the cold expressionless of an image of chilled steel.

The shriveled messenger backed away. Doc let him go, apparently not even glancing toward the fellow.

The messenger mingled with the pirates, dodging about in the yellow horde with great frequency. It was apparent he was seeking to lose himself. Several times, he glanced furtively in the direction of the big brown man to whom he had delivered the message tube.

Doc seemed to be paying no attention. Finally, he entered a convenient tent of poles and matting.

The weazened messenger scuttled out of camp. He took to the jungle undergrowth and traveled with extreme caution. Each time he crossed a clearing, he waited on the opposite side a while, watching his back trail. He discerned nothing to alarm.

Nevertheless, the man was being followed. Doc Savage traveled much of the time in the upper lanes of the jungle, employing interlacing branches and creepers for footholds and handgrips. His tremendous strength, his amazing agility, made the treacherous and difficult way seem an easy one.

The shrunken messenger quickened his pace. He had been promised a reward for delivering the bamboo message tube. Tom Too had told him where it would be hidden, in a hollow tree not far ahead.

He reached the tree, thrust an arm into a cavity in the trunk, and brought cut a packet. It was several inches square, very weighty.

"Him heavy like velly many pesos inside!" chortled the man.

Greedily, he tore off the wrappings.

There was a red-hot flash, a leviathan of flame that seemed to swallow the man's body. A mushroom of gray-black smoke spouted. Out of this flew segments of the unfortunate one's carcass, as though the fiery leviathan were spitting it out.

The package had contained a bomb.

Tom Too had planned that this man should never lead any one who followed him to the hiding place of the master pirate.

Chapter 18

PAYMENT IN SUICIDE

DOC SAVAGE circled the spot where the weazened man had died. He sought the trail left by the one who had placed the bomb. His golden eyes missed nothing, for they had been trained through the years to pick out details such as went unnoticed to an ordinary observer.

A vine which hung unnaturally, a bush which had been carefully bent aside and then replaced, but which had a single leaf wrong side up — these vague signs showed Doc the course taken by the bomb depositor. The fellow had come and gone by the same route.

The trail turned out to be a blank. It terminated at the beach, where a boat had landed the man and taken him away.

Taking to the trees for greater speed, Doc hurried to the bay at the north end of the island. The plane was there, anchored a few yards offshore.

There was no sign of life about, except the jungle birds which twittered and screamed and fluttered the foliage.

Doc stood by a sluggish stream which emptied into the bay a few yards from the plane. He decided to try something.

Moving a little more than a rod down the shore, he suddenly sped into the open, crossed the narrow beach and shot like an arrow into the bay. He had appeared with blinding suddenness, and was in the water almost before an eye could bat.

Hence it was that a watching machine gunner got into action too late. A stream of bullets turned the water into a leaping suds where Doc had disappeared.

The gobble of the rapid firer galloped over the bay surface like satanic mirth. Then the noise stopped.

The gunner ran into the open, the better to see his quarry upon appearance. The man was stocky, broad, with a head like a ball of yellow cheese. He stood, gun ready perhaps a hundred yards from where Doc had entered the water.

Minute after minute, he waited. An evil grin began to wrinkle his moon of a face. He had killed the bronze devil!

He did not see the foliage part silently behind him. Nor did he hear the mighty form of a man who glided up to his back.

Awful agony suddenly paralyzed the fellow's arms. He dropped his machine gun. He groveled, struggled, kicked. He was flung to the sand. There he continued his fighting. But he might as well have tried to get out from under the Empire State Building.

He could hardly believe his eyes when he saw the giant who held him was the man he thought he had murdered.

Doc had simply swum under water into the sluggish creek, crawled out and crept silently through the rank undergrowth to the attack.

WITHOUT voicing a word, Doc continued to hold his Victim helpless for the space of some minutes. Doc knew the psychology of fear. The longer the would-be murderer felt the terrible clutch of those metallic hands, the more terrified he would become. And the more frightened he was, the sooner he would tell Doc some things he wanted to know.

"Where is Tom Too?" Doc demanded. He spoke in his normal voice, couching the words in English.

"Me not know!" whined the captive in pidgin.

Doc carried the man into the jungle, found a small clearing, slammed the fellow on his back. The prisoner tried to scream, thinking he was to be slain.

But Doc merely stared steadily into the man's eyes. The gunner began to squirm. Doc's golden eyes had a weird quality; they seemed to burn into the soul of the captive, to reduce his brain to a beaten and helpless thing.

The man tried to shut his eyes to shut out the terrible power of those golden orbs. Doc held the man's eyelids apart.

Hypnotism was another art Doc had studied extensively. He had drained the resources of America on the subject, had studied under a surgeon in Paris who was so accomplished a hypnotist that he used it instead of an anaesthetic when he operated upon patients. A sojourn in mystic India had been added to Doc's perusal of the art. And he had conducted extensive experiments of his own. His knowledge was wide.

The gunner was not long succumbing. He went into sort of a living sleep.

"Where is Tom Too?" Doc repeated his earlier query.

"Me not know."

"Why don't you?"

"Me left at this place, watch canvas sky wagon. Tom Too no tell place him go."

Doc knew the man was telling the truth. The hypnotic spell was seeing to that.

"What about the five white men who were in the plane?" he demanded.

The reply was three words that froze Doc's great body.

"Him all dead."