Doc Savage: Phantom Lagoon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (3 page)

EVIDENTLY, Pippel knew this section of Brooklyn, for he presumed the girl would, after a suitable interval to ensure that she had shaken all pursuit, head for the famous bridge across the East River. He took a short-cut, drove in a crow-flight line through cramped streets with gullied pavements. Repeatedly his lips moved soundlessly as he calculated whether he was going to be able to head the girl off. When he reached the bridge, he was looking pleased with himself. He had made it.

Parking in a side street at the Brooklyn end of the bridge, he waited and shortly the girl’s sedan appeared in the traffic.

Pippel then pulled out into the stream of vehicles and followed her. The girl slammed across the bridge, took a screeching turn at the first opportunity and arrowed toward the downtown skyscraper section.

Pippel trailed her. Two or three times he swore at the girl ahead, and the rest of the time he was scowling and preoccupied.

“Damn her!” he snarled more than once. His oaths had a vicious canine quality about them.

The young woman stopped her car before one of the tallest buildings in the city. The building was a towering monolith of steel and brick. Pippel gave a violent start and popped his eyes at the structure. His hands choked the steering wheel.

“Whew!” he gasped. “She’s going to—to—” He got starkly pale.

The girl sprang out of the car and ran toward the entrance of the skyscraper.

She was hailed by a policeman.

“Sorry, Miss,” the cop called, “but you can’t park there.”

If the girl heard, she gave no sign; she kept on running.

The cop was evidently in a bad temper, because he dashed after the girl and caught her. The cop took hold of her elbow.

“Hey,” the cop growled, “you can’t park—” He gulped when he saw the terror on the girl’s face. “Glory be! What’s wrong with you?”

“I—er—” The girl swallowed two or three times, and got control of herself. “Nothing,” she insisted in a flinty voice. “I’m just—just in a hurry.”

The cop peered at the girl. “You look like the wrath of Old Nick was after you. What’s wrong with you, lass?”

The girl swallowed. She looked to be on the verge of venting some of her cargo of sulfur, but thought better of antagonizing an arm of the law.

“I’m—just—late—picking up a fare,” she explained grimly. “Get me?”

Evidently, the cop had no patience with women who showed up late for anything, because he snorted derisively.

“Lady,” he said, “late or not, you can’t park your car where you’ve got it now.”

The blonde throttled her abrasive personality, became wheedling.

“Please—just for a few minutes,” she pleaded.

“Sure, I know. The few minutes will be the whole darn mornin’!” The cop jerked his thumb at her car. “Get it outta here!”

The girl stamped an irate foot, then tapped back and flounced into her taxi, and wrenched the little jitney out into traffic.

Enough arm waving had accompanied this incident to make what had happened clear to Pippel, who had double-parked in a spot where he could observe. He watched the girl leave.

Then Pippel wheeled his machine into a side street, pulled up beside a parked taxi, and jumped out. He accosted the taxi driver.

“Look, hackman.” Pippel showed a five-dollar bill. “Park my car for me, will you? I haven’t got time. Business appointment. Hell of a hurry.”

The taxi driver looked at the five-dollar bill and nodded.

“O.K.,” he said. “But how’ll you know where I parked your car?”

Pippel pointed at a sign which stood on the sidewalk. It was a black and white sign on a metal frame, and said,
Taxi Stand.

“Take a pencil and write on that where you parked the car,” he said. “And leave the keys in the machine.”

“O.K.” The taxi driver jumped into Pippel’s machine and drove off to park it.

Pippel ran to a cigar store, dived into a telephone booth, and the dial mechanism whizzed while he was getting his number.

He recognized the voice which answered.

“Listen!” he exploded.
“The damn girl went to Doc Savage!”

This apparently failed to register at the other end.

“What?” the voice asked.

“Doc Savage! Damn the girl—she’s going to Doc Savage! A cop wouldn’t let her park in front of the building, and that gives us a few minutes to get organized.”

“Why so worried?” the voice interrupted.

“She’s going to Doc Savage!”

“And so what?”

“Listen, you fool, haven’t you heard of Doc Savage?”

The other admitted, “I remember a story in the newspapers about a Doc Savage who had invented something called an electro-scalpel, for a new painless kind of surgery. But why should we go into a cold sweat because the girl ran to some medico?”

Pippel looked as if he wanted to bite pieces out of the black telephone mouthpiece.

“I didn’t think you knew much about Savage, you dummy! The guy’s a doctor the way the President of the United States is a politician. What I mean, that ain’t the half of it. He’s some kind of professional trouble-buster.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s his main line of work. Solving other people’s troubles. He works without pay. Does it for the thrill of it, I hear. I know it sounds crazy, but when the girl spills what she knows, it’s gonna be too bad.”

“What makes you so sure she knows anything?”

“Look, sucker, why else would she be going to Doc Savage? Get over here quick as you can. That girl is gonna have trouble finding a place to park. I got a little time, but mighty little!”

“What are you going to do?”

“What we should have done to start with. Get rid of her.”

“And what about Doc Savage?”

“If she talks to Doc Savage first, I’ll have to get rid of him, too.”

“Ain’t that pretty drastic?” the telephone voice blurted out.

“We can’t have any stink stirred up,” Pippel growled. “Hell, we’re just ready to start everything. We can’t have anybody getting suspicious. This is too big.”

“This is bigger than big,” the other muttered. “This is the future of the world that’s gonna change, if things go right.”

“They,” growled Pippel, “are going to go right no matter who ends up sleeping in pine boxes.”

Chapter III

THE EXPLODING LADY

THE BLISTERED BLONDE calling herself Henrietta had driven about five blocks before she found a place to park. She parked, then sprang out of her machine and looked around for a taxi. She was in a hurry. But this was a side street in the garment district and there was nothing in sight but trucks. She had to walk back to Doc Savage’s skyscraper headquarters.

As she approached it, Henrietta studied the building. It was the tallest spire in the forest of masonry skyscrapers that constituted the city. By reputation, it was the tallest such structure ever built. Tourists came from all over the world just to stand in its modernistic lobby. Despite herself, Henrietta was impressed.

She barged in, showed no interest in the office directory, going instead directly to the sleepy-looking proprietor of a lobby cigar stand. Once again, her manner abruptly changed. She was again snippy.

“Wake up, buster. Where can I find Doc Savage?”

The proprietor seemed to take no offense to the unexpected familiarity.

“Screening room is on the twentieth floor.”

“Screening room?”

“That’s where people who want to see Doc Savage are weeded out from those Doc doesn’t want to see.”

“He’ll want to see me.”

“That’ll be up to the screeners.”

The blonde leaned over the glass counter. “Is there a quicker way?” She batted her crystal blue eyes.

“Doc Savage has the eighty-sixth floor to himself. Private elevator around the corner. But people who stick their snoots up there without being invited are usually disinvited kinda firmly.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

The blonde stormed around the corner.

A private elevator, she realized, would cost plenty of dough. She expected something ostentatious. To her moderate surprise, Henrietta located a lift which was dignified and restrained.

The cage surprised her when it arrived. There was no uniformed starter. Just a button marked Eighty-sixth Floor. Boarding confidently, she stabbed it.

The cage door closed. The elevator shot upward. The ride began smoothly. After a dozen floors, the blonde fell to her knees and began feeling like an inebriated elephant was balancing on her shoulders.

When the doors opened again, she was astonished to discover she had reached the eighty-sixth floor.

The combination of the breathtaking ride and the speed with which it had been completed seemed to take some of the gustiness out of her mainsail. Picking herself off the floor, she tentatively stepped out into the plain corridor on rubbery feet.

At the end of a corridor she found the door. It was painted bronze. On the front was modestly lettered:

Clark Savage, Jr.

“At last!”

Composing herself, Henrietta assaulted the panel with her knuckles.

The door fell open right away and she found herself face to face with a striking individual with the general air of a snowy eagle.

“Who might you be, gramps?” she demanded.

“Ham Brooks,” the eagle replied.

Her eyes narrowed. Henrietta’s first impression had been that he was an overdressed fop, and she revised that opinion. Indeed, the white-haired Ham would have been considered, in any city but New York, a fop because of the striped afternoon trousers, tea vest and spats.

He held in one well-manicured hand a tasteful black cane.

“Call me Henrietta,” she said. “I’m the gal who sent the collect telegram.”

“You are not expected,” Ham Brooks said. “And we do not accept collect telegrams from persons we do not know. Normally, unexpected visitors are received on the twentieth floor.”

“This is too important for ceremony, glad rags.”

This saucy comment seemed to get Ham Brooks’ attention, because he stepped back, allowing Henrietta to enter.

“You must be the legal eagle who pals around with Doc,” she observed tartly.

Ham looked injured. “I am Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, one of Doc Savage’s associates.”

A remarkably squeaky voice broke in: “Don’t let him kid you. He’s only Doc’s personal chauffeur.”

Henrietta found herself standing in a reception room. The spires of Manhattan were visible through the tall windows. There was a desk—really a massive table decorated with inlays—a gigantic floor safe of significant age, and through an open door was what looked like a library filled with tomes and dominated by a globe of the world that was no less than twelve feet around.

The owner of the voice ambled in from the library. He was a squat, apish fellow possessing an incredibly homely but pleasant face. He had the kind of face that dogs wag their tails at and kids follow. There didn’t seem to be room for more than a spoonful of brains in his bullet of a head, but Henrietta knew this impression was deceptive.

“You have to be Monk Mayfair, the industrial chemist,” she said.

Monk beamed. He obviously enjoyed being recognized by attractive females.

“In the flesh.”

“In the fur, you mean,” sneered Ham. “You might want to keep your distance, miss. He sometimes suffers from fleas.”

“Yeah, blondie,” growled Monk, suddenly rolling up both sleeves to reveal amazingly red-furred forearms. “Keep back. His mouth is liable to fly in any direction once I knock his block off.”

The odd duo traded fierce expressions that suggested impending slaughter.

Henrietta half expected war to break out. In fact, it looked imminent when Ham Brooks lifted his dark cane and raised it threateningly. It was revealed to be a sword cane. Monk blocked rusty fists and the pair appraised one another like two bull moose contemplating a vigorous round of butting heads and horns.

“If this doesn’t beat all,” she said acidly.

“What’s that?” asked Monk, not taking his small eyes off his opponent.

“A man-monkey versus a man in a monkey suit.”

Ham snapped out of his fighting stance. “Here now, what is your business with Doc Savage?”

“I understand he owns a submarine,” the blonde said loftily. “I want to hire it and a crew. No questions asked.”

“By whom?” asked Ham, puzzled.

“I said no questions asked!” the blonde snapped back.

“You just answered this fashion plate’s question,” chuckled Monk. “And we’re not exactly in the sub-renting business.”

“Where is this sub?” Henrietta suddenly demanded.

“Sure you don’t wanna tell me what you want it for first?” asked Monk.

“I don’t explain myself to just any ape,” Henrietta snapped.

Monk looked pained. As a matter of fact, it had been his experience in the past that he had very good luck with femininity, and the prettier they were the better his luck, as a rule. His complete homeliness seemed to fascinate them, or something.

Henrietta, seeing that she was getting nowhere, promptly changed tactics. “I demand to see Doc Savage!” she yelled.

“Doc is presently conducting a scientific experiment of some consequence,” related Ham in an important tone.

“Yeah, he left orders sayin’ he can’t be disturbed,” Monk chimed in.

“You mean you won’t let me in to see him?” Henrietta snapped.

“Listen, lady,” Monk said. “Doc is busy in the laboratory.You gotta tell us what it is you want, or you don’t get in. And don’t yell at me!”

“I’ll do more than yell at you!”

Monk Mayfair’s bullet skull boasted a furring of rusty red hair. Henrietta took told of two tufts of this and commenced screaming at the top of her healthy lungs. “I’ve got to see Doc Savage, and I’ll see him if I have to tear you apart!”

Her long fingernails raked his homely physiognomy. This so startled the homely chemist, he backed away, muttering, “What hit me?”

Ham Brooks stepped in then, and attempted to settle the blonde into a soft chair. She turned around and barked his elegant shin with the toe of one sharp shoe.

Howling, Ham grabbed up his shin and hopped in place. He managed to retain his polished cane during this procedure. It made a very comical picture.