Doc Savage: Phantom Lagoon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (4 page)

Stepping in, the fire-eating blonde took hold of the dapper lawyer’s cravat and gave it a forceful yank. Still hopping, Ham made a grab for the dangling adornment. He lost his cane.

Henrietta snatched it up, and gave it a twist, saying, “I read about this frog-sticker of yours.” The cane came apart, revealing a long thin blade of excellent steel, with which she proceeded to slash gaping tears in Ham’s faultless attire. The dapper one went into paroxysms of horror. He attempted to dance out of the way of the flashing blade, was chased into a corner.

This struck the homely chemist as hilarious. He quickly forgot his own injury and began shouting encouragement to the blonde. “See if you can spear his tie without cuttin’ his throat.”

Tossing aside the useless portion of the cane, Henrietta backed the beset barrister into a corner and began flaying the knot of his silk tie.

“How do you like them apples, you fancy Dan?” Henrietta hissed.

Ham howled, “Monk, you anthropoid! Don’t just stand there—restrain this madwoman!”

Monk doubled over with mirth. He was enjoying himself immensely.

“After you shred his tie,” he encouraged, “see if you can harvest his cufflinks. The diamonds are supposed to be real.”

AT that moment, Doc Savage entered the room. No sound attended his arrival, no shadow preceded him to warn of his silent approach, but instantly the atmosphere in the room changed. It was as if a dynamo had started up, filling the air with the crackle of electricity and the promise of exciting things.

Henrietta felt some of that electricity. She turned. Her crystal blue eyes fell on the imposing figure of Doc Savage. They widened. Her grim mouth lost its elastic band quality.

“Oh, doctor!” she exclaimed.

Doc was a bronzed giant of a man, but there was nothing beefy about his build. His neck sinews, the tendons in the backs of his long-fingered hands, looked as supple as bundles of violin strings. There was a flowing ease about his movements that indicated great agility and Herculean strength.

Doc’s features were regular, and he had remarkable penetrating flake-gold eyes. His hair was bronze, slightly darker than the hue of his skin, and a disturbed lock of it hung down on his forehead. His big bronze body was encased in a white laboratory smock. The contrast between the smock and his deeply bronzed skin was arresting.

“See?” muttered Monk in disgust. “Now you’ve disturbed Doc in the middle of his work.”

“What seems to be the trouble here?” Doc asked in a noticeably well-modulated tone of voice.

“This dish-faced ape told me I couldn’t see you,” Henrietta complained, flinging aside the sword cane.

The bronze giant noticed the worse-for-wear Monk and Ham. “What on earth happened to you two?” he inquired.

“I’d try explainin’,” the homely chemist muttered, “but it’s too embarrassin’.”

Ham said nothing. He was contemplating his ruined attire as if it were burned and peeling hide.

Doc took in the blonde’s severely sunburned skin, her loud and revealing outfit, which ran to polka-dots.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

Henrietta composed herself and her voice.

“Honestly, Mr. Savage, you have quite the reputation,” she breathed. “I read all about you in a magazine.” She batted her striking eyes. “I think you’re just the guy I need to help me.”

The bronze man retained his poker face. Obviously, he was not susceptible to flattery.

“This is new,” Henrietta murmured to herself. “A man who is impervious to feminine charms.”

Henrietta experienced her first inkling that Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze, was something more than an ordinary man.

Doc Savage belonged to a class of mortals who demonstrated that if a man set his sights upon a goal and devoted intensive efforts in the pursuit of that goal, astounding results might be achieved.

In this case, Doc had been set upon the path to greatness by his parents, who entrusted him into the care of a succession of scientists and other renowned experts, with the firm and unwavering purpose of transforming the lad into a scientific superman.

All knowledge, from science and medicine, to how to ride a horse and sail a sloop, as well as the rougher arts of combat, wilderness survival and speaking foreign languages, had been made available to him. And Doc had mastered them all, becoming in adulthood a greater expert in these respective disciplines that those who had tutored him.

All of this strenuous activity had been channeled to a single noble purpose. Doc Savage had been trained for the far-ranging career he was following—righting wrongs which ordinary forces of law and order could not combat. This altruistic career—for Doc took no pay—sometimes took him to the distant and dangerous corners of the globe.

“Trouble, Incorporated” might have been the name of the concern which Doc Savage headed. But it had no name, other than his own, for everyone knew that if you had troubles too large to handle, Doc Savage was the man to see.

Hence, the arrival of Henrietta and her presumed problem was not a unique thing.

Doc Savage appraised the blonde with his compelling flake-gold eyes. No emotion registered on his metallic lineaments.

“Aren’t you the girl they found marooned on a tropic island?” he wondered.

“Yeah, I’m the gal off the island,” Henrietta returned, “and don’t starting asking me my name or how I got here!”

“Said her name was Henrietta,” said Monk, feeling of his face and hair.

The girl stepped up to the bronze man and made fists at her sides. “I’ve got a proposition for you, big boy,” she said.

“Proposition?”

“Call it a job. And I’ll pay you plenty to do it—but no questions asked, see?”

Doc began removing his smock. It presently became obvious that he possessed the muscular development of a gladiator. He stood taller than he had at first seemed, which was the result of the unusual symmetry of his wonderfully well-developed physique.

“I think you have us wrong, lady,” Monk interjected.

Henrietta spun on the apish chemist.

“You stay out of this, King Kong!” Whirling back to Doc, she said, “Listen, I read about you in a magazine. You’re professional trouble hunters, ain’tcha?”

“In a way,” Doc admitted. “But we are not for hire.”

“Whatcha mean—not for hire?”

Doc, showing more patience than the occasion demanded, replied, “We mix in things that interest us—and where we can do some good. We don’t care to be hired, and we certainly don’t go into anything unless we know what it is.”

Henrietta’s face grew indignant. Her voice reclaimed some of its previous volume.

“Well, you’re going to work for me, like it or not! And don’t think—”

Doc Savage broke in. It was a testament to the restrained power of his voice that it was heard over Henrietta’s screeching.

“We are not interested, Miss. Monk—show her to the door.”

“With pleasure,” Monk declared. Ambling up, he batted Henrietta’s flailing hands away and tucked her under one hairy arm. The blonde firecracker kicked wildly, pounding helplessly on the hairy chemist’s chest.

As the apish Monk carried her from the reception room, Henrietta howled a parting threat, “You mugs! You’ll see! You don’t know who you’re fooling with!
I’m Hornetta Hale!”

MONK MAYFAIR bore the struggling, kicking blonde to their special elevator, summoned the cage with the thumb-press of a button, and when it arrived casually asked, “This the lift you took?”

“Yeah, you big monkey. It practically disjointed my skeleton on the way up.”

Monk chuckled good-naturedly. “Well, you might want to curl up in a ball on account of the ride down is even more bone-jarrin’.”

The doors opened and the hairy chemist deposited the blonde into the waiting cage. He sent it on its way.

As the doors closed, the blonde hellion called out, “You’ll hear from my lawyer! I’ll sue your pants off for this, don’t think I won’t.”

Grinning broadly, Monk started back for the reception room. Ham suddenly burst out, saying, “Come on, you baboon!” He pointed imperatively to the door with his recovered sword cane.

“What’s up, now?”

“Trouble down in the screening room.”

So fast did the elevator run that by the time the pair reached it, the cage was again free, having deposited Hornetta Hale in the lobby.

They reached the twentieth floor screening room and found two men there. At sight of them, Monk and Ham went instantly on guard. One was tall and thin and held a pearl-gray handkerchief before his face. A rust-colored overcoat enveloped his rangy form, and the brim of his hat was pulled down low. The other was short and blond and had a nondescript air about him.

“Can we help you gentlemen?” Ham asked coolly.

“Yeah,” said the shorter of the two. “We’re looking for a woman.”

“Really?”

Monk asked, “A blonde? Kind of sassy?”

“Yeah. That’s her. Where is she?”

“I ain’t seen hide nor hair. I was just testin’ you. We get a lot of cranks here.”

“We have to screen visitors very carefully,” added Ham in a suave tone.

The pair didn’t know whether to explode or not. They stood on their feet with a general air of race horses awaiting the starter’s pistol.

“What makes you think you’d find your nameless blonde here?” Ham asked pointedly.

“Just a hunch. You see, she’s my kid sister. Goes by the name of Hornetta. She fell out of a tree a few months ago and it knocked her cock-eyed, if you know what I mean.”

“Cock-eyed, eh?” said Ham.

“Yeah. Hornetta’s a little off. She’s been talking about coming here to see Doc Savage for weeks. We think she—well, her head is so full of wild stories we’re not sure what she was going to tell him. Anyway, she up and ran away and this is naturally the first place we thought to look.”

“Ain’t seen her,” Monk repeated. The apish chemist then addressed the man in the rust-hued overcoat who kept his handkerchief before his face at all times.

“What about you,” he asked. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Hab a code,” the man said thickly.

“Yeah, it sounds like you got yourself a whopper of a cold,” Monk agreed.

Ham inserted, “Would you gentlemen care to identify yourselves?”

“We would not,” said the nondescript one. “This is a family matter. Confidential, you understand?”

“Perfectly,” drawled Ham.

Monk and Ham regarded the duo, patience written on their faces. The odd pair seemed reluctant to leave.

Finally, the short one said, “Well, if you’re sure our sister never showed up….”

“Absolutely positive,” returned Ham crisply.

“In that case, we’ll be on our way.”

“Sorry we can’t help,” said Monk.

“Good luck with your search,” added Ham, stepping aside to allow them to pass.

The two men then departed in sullen silence. At no point did the tall one allow his features to be viewed clearly. After the door had closed, Monk asked of Ham, “Whatcha make of their story, shyster?”

The dapper lawyer shrugged. “It sounded like a story.”

“But it could be true,” Monk suggested contrarily.

“It might,” allowed Ham.

THEY consulted Doc Savage in his eighty-sixth floor laboratory.

The bronze man took in all they had to say in absorbed silence. Then he announced, “It would have been better had you trailed those two rather than stopped to consult with me.”

The remark was not offered as criticism. Merely as an observation. No tone of recrimination touched Doc’s well-modulated tones. Still, Monk and Ham looked instantly crestfallen. Ham twisted his elegant cane in both hands until his knuckles turned white.

“Should we give chase?” he asked.

The bronze man shook his head. “My experiment is too important for me to abandon it without sound reason. The girl did not appear to be in trouble, if her appeal can be believed.”

“Gotcha, Doc,” said Monk. “We’ll skip it.”

“If this matter is important, we will hear of Hornetta Hale again,” Doc said, then turned his attention back to the experiment he was conducting.

Seeing that their leader was immersed in his work, Monk and Ham silently withdrew to the library.

“For my part,” sniffed Ham Brooks, looking at the ruin that was his garments, “I would just as soon forget that woman ever darkened our door.”

“Same here,” muttered Monk in rare agreement with his arch-nemesis.

Chapter IV

THE JAM

THE NAME OF of Hornetta Hale was not an easy one to forget.

True, that was not her real name. A newspaper journalist had hung the appellation on her back in the days when she dominated the headlines. That had been several years ago. She was not exactly forgotten these days. Adventuresses of Hornetta Hale’s stripe are hardly ever forgotten. But her luster had dimmed since the short-lived era during which she and her smart racing job of a seaplane had buzzed the world.

She had been Henrietta Hale then. Which was supposed to make her pretty extraordinary. She had done so much that sometimes she felt old at twenty-nine—people generally believed she was older than that, yet she looked younger. She was a stunningly pretty girl, just a little regal. Most men were scared of her, the average male preferring to wear the chest hair in his family. After an average male heard about the time the Tugeri headhunters of the Dutch East Indies besieged Hornetta Hale for six days, he was apt to crawl away.

It had been profitable, this freelance adventuring for pay. It had been a calculated and planned business. The idea had occurred to her after she got what she considered a lucky break, and became the leading débutante of the season. They called it No. 1 Glamour Girl now. Ordinarily the attendant fame lasted for a few weeks; maybe it lasted longer if you were good newspaper copy and appealing camera fodder.

Henrietta had made herself a job. The job was the nation’s adventure girl. She was not American First Family; she wasn’t even Park Avenue. She was only a tall blonde gal whose folks had come from Oklahoma with some oil money, most of which they’d lost. It was a good background. The public ate it up.

With the war in Europe in full cry, the exploring racket was slipping; it was a dying horse. But Henrietta Hale in her heyday made good copy and good camera fodder, so she made the old nag gallop. She flew to Australia, via the South Sea Islands, and got stranded on an uninhabited island. She had no food. So she ate plankton. They’re the little sea organisms on which whales live. Depend on Hornetta Hale to come up with the unusual. For the papers had taken to calling her that by that time.