Doc Savage: Phantom Lagoon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (16 page)

The impressive yacht pounded through the whitecaps, as Monk raced for the radio set .

He listened a minute, shouted, “S.O.S. coming through. It’s the
Caribbulla!”

“What happened?” asked Pat anxiously.

“They ain’t sayin’! There has been an explosion on board—a big one. The liner is already listin’.”

Monk listened further.

“It’s bad—plenty bad. They’re already orderin’ the passengers into lifeboats.”

“That
is
bad,” mused Ham Brooks. “They appear to have fallen victim to a submarine attack.”

Monk was hollering into the microphone, demanding to know what was happening. From the changing expressions on his homely face, he did not appear to be receiving satisfactory answers.

“They’re scrambling to get off the boat,” he reported hoarsely. “Let’s see if we can help out.”

Ham wailed, “I have the engines running at their maximum speed.”

Monk turned to Pat and said, “Grab a pair of binoculars! Look for a periscope, or wake or anything that tells of a submarine. We could be next.”

“Jove!” moaned Ham. The dapper lawyer rushed to the special device called a “listener.” This enabled him to hear through headphones the sounds of any underwater activity through hydrophones distributed about the hull, below the waterline. This would include the engines of any submarine.

Clapping the cans over his ears, the elegant lawyer concentrated on the marine noises coming from the activated device.

“I hear nothing that smacks of a submersible,” he reported.

Stationed on the flying bridge, Pat was searching the crinkling blue waves. “All clear!” she called out.

“Nothin’ here either,” reported Monk.

Pat said cautiously, “I don’t see
any
sign of trouble.”

Grimly, Monk piloted the powerful yacht toward the smudge of smoke that was growing and spreading across the waves. Soon, they could smell it.

Monk sniffed the approaching odors with simian curiosity.

“Smells like T.N.T.,” he muttered.

“This does not sound like the work of a submarine torpedo,” said Ham.

“Remains to be seen,” returned Monk.

Pat wore her sixgun on a holster at her hip, Western-style. Lowering her binoculars, she drew the huge weapon.

Monk asked, “What are you aimin’ to do?”

“I am aiming to pick off anything that looks suspicious to me,” said the bronze-haired girl with steely determination.

“In your excitement,” cautioned Monk, “try not to shoot any survivors.”

Pat gave the homely chemist a withering look. Then she returned her attention to the smudgy waters.

The black stuff was rolling in like an evil fog bank. The stink of the smoke was climbing into their nostrils, getting into their lungs, clogging their breathing.

Ham began coughing. And complaining.

“Dratted foul stuff!”

The sepia smoke caused Monk to throttle back the engines, while Ham turned on a movable searchlight to pierce the enveloping smudge.

They could see the liner now. It was, in fact, listing to port. Lifeboats were being lowered from davits. There was a mad scramble to get off the ship.

“What are we going to do about this?” asked Pat, features stricken.

Ham said, “Look for injured. The people in the lifeboats should be fine for now. No doubt rescue vessels are responding to the S.O.S. distress call.”

They soon came upon the first lifeboat, and called over to those huddled on its bare benches. Passengers were wrapped up in coarse blankets, and shivered visibly.

“What happened?” Ham asked them.

A man cupped his hands around his mouth, megaphone style. “Explosion below decks.”

“Any sign of a sub?” yelled Monk.

“No,” he was told. “But the explosion was below the water line.”

Pat offered, “Sounds like a sub…”

Ham Brooks interjected, “Jumping to conclusions is not becoming of associates of Doc Savage.”

“Pardon me,” sniffed Pat in a mock-snooty tone of voice.

They moved among the lifeboats, which began pushing away from the stricken vessel. Every shell was full of huddled humanity.

Everywhere, passengers looked frightened, but seemingly were uninjured.

Pat questioned every passing boat.

“Any injured? Did any of you see a submarine in the water?”

The answers to both questions were a resounding No.

Cautiously, moving at a deliberate pace so as not to run down any bobbing lifeboats in the murky pall, Ham Brooks made a circuit of the liner.

In due course, a final lifeboat was lowered, and the black cap of the captain of the ship was visible at the bow. They made for that boat.

Pulling up to that bobbing shell, they accosted the
Caribbulla’s
skipper.

“We’re Doc Savage’s men,” identified Ham Brooks. “What happened here?”

“Explosion in the hold, near the hull.”

“Torpedo?”

The Captain shook his head. “No. Sabotage.”

“Are you sure?” demanded Monk.

“There was no question of it. Someone deliberately blew a hole in the boat from within the cargo hold.”

Ham asked, “Where are the passengers you were watching?”

The skipper shrugged helpless shoulders, and admitted, “We have no idea. I personally supervised the loading of every lifeboat. They were not aboard.”

“You lost track of them?” complained Ham.

The Captain said defensively, “In the aftermath of the explosion, there was naturally a great deal of confusion. Watching those men was no longer an imperative. Once we saw that the liner was doomed, evacuating the passengers became our chief concern. I assumed that the matter of the missing passengers would sort itself out during the evacuation.”

“Was there any missing lifeboat?”

“That, too,” admitted the officer, “seemed unimportant at the time. Possibly. I cannot say for certain. But someone on board holed my vessel, and it stands to reason that those persons evacuated at some point, possibly before the explosion.”

At that point, the Captain turned and watched his liner list further and further to the point where its smokestacks inexorably sank toward the brine. Silently, tragically, he watched the stacks, still smoking, extinguish themselves amid the waves, like gigantic cigars.

With a surge and a gurgle, the liner
Caribbulla
began slipping beneath the waves. Its bare deck was facing them like a great sinking wall.

It was over in an astonishingly short period of time. Atlantic waves sloshed and crashed around, somewhat obscured by the black smudge. The ship had gone below.

When the Captain was done watching, he turned his emotion-stiffened face back to them. A tear could be seen crawling out of the corner of one eye.

“Mark me,” he said hoarse-voiced. “This is sabotage—nothing less.”

They believed him.

Cutting in and out among the lifeboats, Monk and the crew searched every face, seeking the aristocratic countenance of the mysterious Count.

No one resembling that worthy—or anyone else who looked suspicious—presented themselves. The survivors appeared shaken and frightened and too preoccupied with their plight to be of much help.

“Good thing there were no casualties,” commented Ham Brooks.

“But where did our scalawags run off to?” gritted Pat Savage. “Could they have slipped off the boat before the explosion?”

“That is the only reasonable supposition,” returned Ham Brooks. “But where the devil did they slip off to?”

“Probably dropped off in a lifeboat,” grunted Monk. “It’s gettin’ to be a popular stunt around this neck of the Atlantic.”

“In broad daylight? They would have been seen.”

“We are back to wondering about submarines,” complained Pat.

“If a submarine picked them up,” said Ham carefully, “why not simply torpedo the ship afterward?”

“Probably didn’t want to stir up a war,” reminded Monk.

“Well, they sure stirred up something big,” predicted Ham Brooks glumly. “Doc Savage will not be happy to hear about this.”

Chapter XVI

THE WATER GARGOYLE

DOC SAVAGE WAS most definitely not happy to hear about the fate of the passenger liner Caribbulla.

His melodious trilling was yanked out of him when the skipper of the
Matador
brought him the news.

“Any loss of life?” asked Doc. It was characteristic of the bronze man that his first thought would have been for the passengers, rather than the loss of a valuable ship of which he was part owner.

“Happily, no,” reported the Captain. “All passengers are reported safe and well. We are, of course, changing course to meet the lifeboats and render whatever assistance we may.”

“All
passengers?”

“Perhaps you had better speak with your man,” suggested the
Matador
skipper.

Doc went to the radio room, and Monk Mayfair came on the line.

“This is the scariest thing I’ve ever heard of!”
complained Monk.
“The ship was sabotaged. No question about it. But the guys we were shadowin’ got clean away.”

“Clean away in mid-Atlantic?” demanded Doc.

“They ain’t among the lifeboat passengers. We checked all the way around, and the crew agrees with us. They got away scot free. Probably before they blew up the tub.”

Doc Savage said grimly, “If the passengers are safe, see if you can hunt up any sign of the dory on which our quarry evacuated.”

“Gotcha, Doc. Monk signing off.”

Doc Savage turned to the Captain of the
Matador.
“How long until we reach the lifeboats?”

“No sooner than midnight.”

The bronze man seemed dissatisfied. “It is urgent that we locate those missing men.”

“I will request that a British naval cutter look into it.”

“Thank you,” Doc Savage said sincerely.

THE PACKET STEAMER
MATADOR
reached the zone of thinning smoke where the
Caribbulla
had gone down long after darkness had descended upon the Atlantic. By this time, a few of the women passengers had grown hysterical. But the men were holding up. In fact, except for an individual here and there, most were holding up remarkably well. Nerves were understandably frayed and on edge. They all knew that they were sitting ducks in the event of a submarine attack—which was not entirely unlikely given how a certain enemy nation of the British had been harassing and sinking shipping for some months now.

The securing and raising of the lifeboats onto the deck of the
Matador
was executed with admirable British efficiency. It took less than two hours; soon the extra lifeboats were littering the afterdeck of the steamer.

There was some discussion of what to do with these latter shells, the
Matador
not being designed to carry twice its customary complement of lifeboats.

It was soon realized that in the event of further trouble they would need all those boats to handle an evacuation of the
Matador,
so they were organized where they would be as much out-of-the-way as humanly possible.

With the Captain’s permission, Doc Savage and Long Tom went among the grateful passengers, who were being given strong coffee or tea, as well as sandwiches, as they became accustomed to their new vessel.

After a thorough search, Long Tom came up to Doc Savage and said, “Nobody out of the ordinary that I can make out.”

“The Count and his men either went down with the ship, or got off before the explosion. If the latter, then that implicates them in the sinking.”

Long Tom fingered his jaw forcefully. “Sounds like they are guilty, all right. Do you suppose they smuggled that T.N.T. on board just to scuttle the ship?”

“It is difficult to say,” admitted Doc Savage. “The entire affair is difficult to comprehend. The objectives of this group remain murky, to say the least.”

Doc Savage went to confer with the
Matador’s
skipper. They did so in the captain’s quarters, talking at great length.

In the end, the Captain said heavily, “It is clear that something is transpiring which requires deep investigation. I think that, given present circumstances, and in light of the acute assistance you and your men have rendered to the Crown, your presence in Hamilton may be put off until later.”

“Thank you,” said Doc Savage. “We will escort you to port. However, we may join you in Hamilton, once we have concluded our search.”

“That would be much appreciated,” said the skipper. “In the meantime, you and your man may board your own vessel at your convenience. With our best wishes.”

DOC SAVAGE found Long Tom Roberts in the radio room, exchanging reports with Monk on the
Stormalong.

Doc Savage told the slender electrical engineer, “We will put off in one of the surplus lifeboats.”

This was thought to be the most prudent way to go about it, for bringing the steamer about to rendezvous with the
Stormalong
would be to invite attack—if there were in fact any hostile raiders lurking in the vicinity.

Doc and Long Tom lowered the lifeboat by themselves in order to accomplish the task without calling attention to their departure. Once in the water, they pushed off, and watched the
Matador
steam onward.

The
Stormalong
was informed by radio of the position of the tiny lifeboat. Having discovered nothing of interest, it cut through the waters at its best speed, and before long it had located Doc’s lifeboat, navigating in the darkness with ease.

Ham Brooks hailed them from the cabin cruiser’s bridge saying, “No luck. No luck at all.”

The two vessels maneuvered until they were floating side by side. Long Tom came up the pilot’s ladder, followed by the bronze man.

Doc looked around the open cockpit aft. “Where is Pat?”

“Hiding below,“ Ham said dryly. “We put the fear of your wrath into her headstrong noggin.”

“That was unnecessary,” replied Doc.

Monk offered, “Considerin’ that she was after
your
scalp in the first place, it seemed to be a smart thing to do.”