Doc Savage: Phantom Lagoon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (8 page)

The submarine had been an unpleasant place to endure a conflagration, and Hornetta looked as if she had spent the day in a steam bath, but she had survived the ordeal.

Casting a mournful glance back at the drydocked and immobile underseas craft, Hornetta slipped out of the blackened shell that had been the Hidalgo Trading Company boathouse-hangar.

A nighthawk taxi driver was loafing along the waterfront in search of a fare. Hornetta Hale stopped him by the most expedient method. She ran into the beams of his headlamps and waved her arms energetically.

The driver braked smartly, and craned his head out of the window.

“What’s the big deal, lady? Trying to end it all?”

“Mind your beeswax,” said Hornetta Hale, coming aboard. She clapped the door shut. “Fade out of here and make it snappy!”

The driver grinned. “Where’s the fire?”

She gestured behind her and forward. “Back there. And up ahead, too.”

“Huh?”

“Skip it,” sniffed Hornetta. Her eyes were red and swollen. It might have resulted from exposure to the smoky ruin. But it might have been repressed emotion.

“Where to, sugar?” the driver asked at last.

“Do they have flophouses for ladies in distress?” Hornetta asked disconsolately.

“I know just the place,” said the cabby.

IT wasn’t exactly a flophouse. But it wasn’t the Ritz, either. The sign over the entrance read:

HOME FOR WANDERING WOMEN

Hornetta paid the driver and entered. Where she obtained the funds would have earned her a night in jail. She had picked a man’s pocket on the street after he had whistled at her.

“I need a room for the night,” she told the matronly desk clerk.

“Spat with hubby?” asked the matron.

“Not as big a spat as what’s coming,” Hornetta said fiercely.

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind. Just give me my room key.”

“You don’t have to be snippy about it, Mrs.—”

“Mudd.”

“Huh?”

“Mary Mudd. That’s my name. Mudd, with two d’s.”

Hornetta Hale took two flights of stairs, put the key in the lock with every intention of taking a much-needed bath and sleeping as long as necessary.

She got as far as opening the door to her room and half way across the threshold. Then she gave an uncharacteristic start.

Three men awaited her inside. They looked at her with unmistakably stern intent.

Hornetta Hale attempted to backpedal out of the room. She simply hadn’t the moxie left for any more pointless flight.

A hairy hand grabbed the other side of the door knob and gave a yank.

Hornetta, clutching the opposite knob, was pulled in with the door. She was unceremoniously precipitated onto the threadbare rug, landing on her polka-dotted backside.

A thin blade of some sort touched her throat. It was long and vicious looking, the tip discolored with what Hornetta Hale mistook for dried blood.

“I am tempted to run you through,” a thin voice sniffed.

“And I ought to break you in half,” another male voice threatened.

But nothing of either sort happened.

Instead, Doc Savage reached down and took Hornetta by one flailing arm.

He lifted her to her feet by main strength and planted her in a wooden chair.

“How— What—?” she sputtered.

Monk squinted his small eyes at her. “That taxi driver belonged to us,” he explained. “As a matter of fact, we set him prowling for you, along with other drivers.”

“Indeed,” seconded Ham. “He had instructions to take you here if you did not give another address.”

“Yeah. And if you did, we would have collected you
there.
”

“Either way,” finished Ham, “you were bound to become our prisoner.”

Hornetta looked flummoxed. Biting one pale lip, she turned her angry gaze up at Doc Savage, who through it all had said nothing.

“Stop looking at me like that, tall, dark and metallic. You make me nervous.”

“If you had been honest with us from the start,” the bronze man said simply, “a great deal of trouble might have been averted.”

“That’s nothing.”

“Eh?”

“I said that’s nothing.”

“Explain yourself,” prompted Doc.

“Compared to what’s coming, I mean.”

“Exactly what
is
coming?” Ham asked in his best barrister manner.

“I told you it was big,” Hornetta reminded.

“You did.”

“Bigger than big.”

“Get to the point,” snapped Ham.

“It’s so big,” said Hornetta Hale, “it could mean the end of the United States of America.”

Doc Savage’s uncanny trilling abruptly filled the room. It had a quality of astonished skepticism. The bronze giant stifled it with difficulty.

“Continue,” invited Ham.

Hornetta Hale folded her sunburned arms stubbornly. “That’s it. That’s all I have to say.”

“We have methods for making you talk,” suggested Ham Brooks.

“Use ’em! See if I care. Pull out my fingernails. Singe my toes. Pluck me like a chicken. I ain’t talking.”

“Leave her to me, Doc,” boasted Monk. “I’ll make her crackle like a hen.”

“You?” sneered the blonde. “That’ll be the day! You’re just sore because I got the better of you.”

Ham opened his lean, mobile mouth to speak, whereupon Hornetta flayed the dapper lawyer with her exquisitely sharp tongue. “As for you, fancy britches, I can see that you’re all in a lather because I wouldn’t give you a tumble.”

Ham turned purple and was reduced to sputtering inarticulately.

Doc Savage said steadily, “What is the point of all this stubborn silence? This is a serious matter. You are in very deep.”

Hornetta snorted. “Deep as Davy Jones’ locker, I’ll tell a man!”

“Then come clean, sister,” growled Monk.

Hornetta promptly changed the subject. “Listen, I got out of that brick kiln alive because I hid in your sub. It looked mighty seaworthy. What do you say?”

“Not without explanations,” said Doc.

Hornetta suddenly thought of something. “Say, how did you three get away?”

“Our plane exploded,” explained Ham.

“Yeah,” said Monk. “But we weren’t in it. We dropped out an emergency hatch on the opposite side, where we couldn’t be seen.”

“I heard all the little explosions before I heard the bigger one,” Hornetta stated.

“That was our plane,” admitted Ham Brooks.

“We just sat down on the riverbed until the coast was clear,” added Monk.

“You and the local catfish, huh?”

“We have our methods,” said Doc, cryptically.

“I’ll bet you do,” Hornetta said dismissively.

Hornetta continued her stubborn stance. She returned to the subject of her present obsession.

“What about that deal? Your sub for a ration of truth?”

“Only a ration?”

“I’m rationing out my truth these days. If you want your share, all of you have to string along with me.”

Hairy Monk looked at the bronze man. “Doc?”

“Yes, Monk?”

“You got any of that new truth serum on you?”

Doc Savage made a show of going through his pockets. “I might just have some.”

“’Cause I think that’s the only way we’re gonna get this leaky faucet to start gushing.”

“Agreed,” said Doc, extracting a case from one pocket. Opening it revealed a thin vial of colorless liquid and a hypodermic needle nestled in a bed of maroon velvet.

Doc directed quietly, “Monk, hold her arm.”

“With pleasure, Doc. I always like to watch you go to work on ’em. Especially tough sisters like this one. They all think they have nerves of iron, but once that truth juice gets to work on them, they start spilling all their secrets like confession is going to come back into style.”

Doc Savage charged the needle. He came over and took one of Hornetta’s sinewy forearms. He pressed the needle point to the raw skin.

Hornetta’s eyes grew wide. “You—you can’t do this! It’s illegal. Isn’t it?”

Monk grinned widely. “Doc is a surgeon. Don’t you know that? If the truth juice don’t work, he’s got a machine to X-ray your brain.”

Hornetta’s eyes protruded from their sockets. A starkness took hold of her shapely form. “All right, all right, you—win!”

“No tricks,” warned Doc.

“Cross my heart and hope to strike gold,” vowed Hornetta Hale.

Doc set the needle on a table as if to keep it handy should Hornetta reverse her decision.

Hornetta composed herself and began speaking.

“You remember when that German passenger dirigible went blooie a few years back?”

“Yes, of course,” said Doc.

“And when the
Lusitania
sank?”

“Yes.”

“And the assassin’s shot that touched off the powder keg that was the last World War?”

“I do,” admitted Doc Savage.

“Well, this will make all three of them look like barnyard accidents.”

“How so?” asked Ham, eyes glowing with interest.

“Well boys, gather around and I’ll tell you.”

Instantly, Ham Brooks leaned in. A mistake.

Hornetta took a swipe at his sword cane, caught it, and claimed possession.

Bouncing out of her chair, she swiped the syringe off the table. It shattered.

Then she took aim at the center of Ham Brooks’ elegant cravat and lunged in with the supple blade, saying, “Gonna inject me, were you? Well, try a taste of your own medicine!”

The blade probably only pinked Ham Brooks’ throat. But that was enough.

The concoction on its tip was a chemical compound that brought swift unconsciousness.

Hornetta yanked out the long blade, and swept after Monk Mayfair, crying, “Next!”

Monk was no sissy. But years of being threatened by that keen rapier at the hands of the ever-dapper Ham gave him a studied respect for its incapacitating effects.

Howling, Monk bobbed back. The blade swished several times, slicing open his shirt front and revealing a red mattress of chest hair.

Doc Savage was moving now. While Hornetta sparred with Monk, he slipped up from behind, seizing her by the neck.

Hornetta had learned fighting skills somewhere. She kicked backward and barked Doc’s shins, first one, then the other.

Doc lost his grip momentarily. That was all Hornetta needed. Spinning, she slashed and sliced wildly.

Hastily, Doc Savage retreated.

Luck was against him. One heel hooked a fringe of the threadbare rug, upset him. Doc got tangled up in a coat tree, had to arrest it with both hands before the heavy object could crash to the floor and create a commotion.

Hornetta flung up a window and made for the fire escape.

She stared down, paused, listened intently. Then, whipping off one shoe and throwing it to the sidewalk, Hornetta raced up toward the roof.

She was looking down over the stone parapet when Doc and Monk hit the sidewalk, discovered the dropped shoe, and raced in opposite directions in search of her.

After a while, they returned, dejected and empty-handed.

The last Hornetta Hale saw of them, they were carrying the unconscious Ham Brooks out to a waiting sedan. It whined off.

“That,” said Hornetta Hale, peering over the parapet, “brings this evening to a satisfactory conclusion!”

She passed the night on the roof, and slept like a lamb. Which she was most assuredly not.

Chapter VIII

THE ARISTOCRATIC ASSASSIN

THE TIME WAS one week later.

It had been an uneventful week, all told.

After explaining to the authorities that they did not yet know who had undertaken to demolish his skyscraper headquarters and his riverfront hangar, Doc Savage had disappeared.

Doc’s men were not, as a matter of fact, unduly alarmed, because it was Doc Savage’s habit to disappear at times without a word of explanation. Sometimes he was gone for months, completely shut off from the world, in a far-off spot which he called his Fortress of Solitude, where he went to study and experiment. Even his five assistants did not know the exact location of this Fortress of Solitude, although they knew it was somewhere within the Arctic Circle. They were reasonably certain that Doc had not gone there. But the bronze man had many enemies, and it was always possible that someone had slipped something over.

The authorities had been skeptical. But Doc held a high honorary commission with not only the local police, but with the Department of Justice as well. He was taken at his word, even if there was some doubt on the matter.

Monk Mayfair had been left in charge of the rehabilitation of the eighty-sixth floor suite of offices. Ham Brooks was attending to legal matters having to do with that. The bronze man had a permanent lease on the building, but did not own it. The owners were irate. This was not the first time destruction had visited the eighty-sixth floor.
¹
It was Ham’s job to smooth down ruffled feathers.

Meanwhile, Monk supervised reconstruction. The reception room was relatively intact. The library was a wreck and the great laboratory was no more. Virtually everything would have to be replaced.

In the reception room, Monk was busy making telephone calls.

“Sure wish Renny and the others were here to help with all this.”

Renny was Colonel John Renwick, a civil engineer of international repute. Together with Long Tom Roberts and Johnny Littlejohn, they comprised the rest of Doc’s tiny band. All three were in different parts of the world pursuing their respective professions.

Since there was a lull in the investigation, Monk thought it unnecessary to summon them home. The man they most needed, Renny, was in Australia, supervising the construction of a new-style cantilever bridge. The big-fisted engineer had promised to return to the States as soon as practical in order to oversee the restoration of the Hidalgo Trading Company building, but there was no telling how long that might be.

By midafternoon of the seventh day after the raid on Doc Savage headquarters, a buzzer sounded.

Monk looked down on the big inlaid table that functioned as a desk. On a panel, a view of the corridor leading to the bronze door showed. A cautious soul, Monk liked to give visitors the once-over before receiving them.