Doc Savage: Phantom Lagoon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (33 page)

Pat made a flustered face, bit her tongue, and stalked off.

NO ONE had much to say as Honoria Hale was hauled off to a launch and brought back to the surviving cutter to join her co-conspirators.

Hornetta Hale watched her twin depart with white-knuckled fists and a strange pallor creeping over her sunburned features.

“We didn’t like each other much,” she said hoarsely, “but we were still kin. That makes it kinda tough to take.”

That was all the comment she offered.

Doc Savage was explaining to the skipper, “This island is honeycombed with pockets of volcanic gas. Some of them, when disturbed, can cause a man to fall down in fits of laughter and go unconscious for periods up to a day. Other pockets, if disturbed, will produce vivid and apparently surreal hallucinations.”

The Captain felt of his smooth jaw. “Sounds like the Navy boys could use this spot for gunnery practice. I’ll set that in motion.”

“Good idea,” said Doc.

They set about evacuating the island, and getting the cruiser
Stormalong
seaworthy once more.

Pat Savage and Hornetta Hale were transferred over to the cruiser as Doc prepared to clear the island. Cans of fuel were conveyed from the cutter to the cruiser, and the
Stormalong’s
fuel tanks were replenished. A working radio receiver and transmitter came with them, courtesy of the grateful United States Coast Guard.

It was not long before a message came over the set. Long Tom took it, and called up to Doc Savage, “They want you on the yacht. Pronto.”

The bronze man was ferried over to the presidential yacht in a small launch, and spent over an hour in conference with the President of the United States.

WHEN Doc returned, the others gathered around him, asking excited questions.

Pat cut through all of them. “How exciting! What did you two talk about?”

“The future defense of the nation,” returned Doc Savage quietly. “With Europe sinking deeper into war, it may be only a matter of time before we are drawn into the conflict.”

After that sobering statement, all queries died. It was also manifestly clear that Doc Savage was not going to reveal any more of his private conversation with the chief executive.

The cutter and the
Stormalong
soon cleared the island, sailing northwestward toward the United States.

The sun was setting in riotous Caribbean splendor when a series of detonations commenced erupting to the stern.

Turning, they watched as the forlorn little island began to come to pieces under the destroyer’s pounding deck guns. Palms shook their crowns like angry fists before toppling. The caldera was blasted apart, and before long the pool it had contained came rushing out to mix with the sea. Quite a quantity of marine life—from groupers and starfish–-came with it. Many floated to the surface, unmoving, eyes staring up at the blue sky in stunned surprise.

“That,” said Monk, “is the end of that blasted wart on the Caribbean.”

Ham pondered, “Too bad we could not get a better look into that old ruin. Who knows what wonders it might have contained.”

This caused Long Tom to ask, “What about those swastikas carved on the temple entrance?”

“Coincidence,” explained Doc. “Such signs are found the world over. Aside from that, the crosses we saw cut in stone displayed arms twisting in the opposite direction as a modern swastika. It was not the same thing at all.”

All seemed over. Then Hornetta Hale, who had been uncharacteristically silent after her sister was taken away in irons, marched up to Doc Savage and said, “Hold up, golden boy! I wanna talk about your attitude!”

“Attitude!”

Hornetta planted scuffed fists on her curvaceous hips as she pointed her thin nose at the big bronze man. “I tried to hire you to go to town on these rascals, and you refused.”

“Which is my right. I do not work for hire.”

“Cast your mind back over the last few days, high pockets,” Hornetta blazed. “If you had gone along with me, we could have nipped this thing in the bud, before the Presidential yacht was almost torpedoed.”

Doc began to object, then Pat Savage interjected, “Hornetta has a point. If you had listened to her, we could have cleaned up on these assassins before it ever got to this point.”

A rare ire showed in the bronze man’s tone as he replied, “Miss Hale refused to divulge any details. It was impossible to know that anything serious was underfoot, or to determine if her shenanigans were merely some madcap scheme for notoriety.”

“Doc’s right,” added Ham reasonably. “This woman is notorious for seeking publicity for herself.”

“Yeah,” added Monk. “She’s a headline hound.”

“No, you rusty gorilla,” countered Hornetta. “I’m an adventuress! And I’m just getting started on my career.”

Doc advised, “It would be very wise of you to put such thoughts behind you. Adventuring is a highly perilous occupation.”

“Well, try and stop me,” snapped Hornetta.

“Yes, try and stop us!” added Pat Savage.

Doc Savage stared. “Us!”

“You heard me!” retorted Pat. “Down in that submarine, Hornetta and I discovered we make an unbeatable team. So we buried the hatchet. When we get back to New York, we’re hanging out a shingle. Savage & Hale, Troublebusters for Hire. We’ll clean up.”

“You will not,” snapped Doc.

“What’s to stop us!” demanded Hornetta. “After this triumph, we’ll probably end up in the history books.”

Doc Savage seemed at a loss for words. Finally, he said, “Normally, common sense would stop you. Between the two of you, there seems to be a shortage of that commodity.”

“Hah!” crowed Pat. “Common sense and what army?”

Studying the two excited amazons, the bronze man decided that probably no army on the face of the earth could dissuade the troublesome team of Patricia Savage and Hornetta Hale from doing exactly what they set their minds to do.

Doc left it to Ham Brooks to break the bad news.

“I am afraid that nothing of what transpired this day will be allowed to reach the newspapers,” he told them. “Washington will hush it up.”

“Well, they can’t hush
us
up,” flared Hornetta.

“That’s right,” snapped Pat. “Savage & Hale are unhushable.”

“Make that Hale & Savage,” corrected Hornetta.

Ham pointed out the undeniable fact that the United States of America was not presently at war. That if word of this attempted assassination of the President got out, a declaration of war would inevitably follow. They had a solemn duty to their country to keep their own counsel on the matter.

“There are no two ways about it,” he concluded firmly. “Why, they would probably clap you both in jail if you so much as whispered the truth of this atrocious international incident.”

After this sad state of affairs had sunk in, Pat said defensively, “We don’t need publicity. Our names and reputations will make us rich. Why, we’ll have so much profitable trouble tramping up to our doorstep, you lads will start begging us for the leftovers!”

“May I make a suggestion?” Doc Savage requested.

“Go ahead,” Pat and Hornetta said in unison.

“In the future, leave us out of it,” said Doc dryly. “It sounds like more excitement than we normally prefer to handle.”

With that, the bronze man walked off to permit the two women to argue over whether the new enterprise should be called Savage & Hale, or Hale & Savage.

“I was off adventuring before you opened up that swanky beauty salon, you glorified shampoo slinger,” Hornetta sneered at Pat.

“I like that!” Pat hurled back. “For your information, you bleached blonde lobster, I come from a long line of famous adventurers.”

“Coming from ain’t the same as practicing. But don’t fret, toots. I’ll take you under my wing and teach you all the ropes. Stick with me and you’ll see trouble the likes of which you heretofore have only dreamed. That is, if you’re tough enough to take it.”

Pat Savage’s mouth fell open. She struggled for a choice phrase with which to verbally skewer the brassy blonde. Nothing immediately came to mind, and Pat felt a growing temptation to sock her new partner in the jaw just for the sheer satisfaction of knocking Hornetta Hale into the drink again.

Monk turned to Ham and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “This could work out, at that. They’re startin’ to sound like you and me on a good day.”

“You mean a bad day,” corrected Ham, giving his cane a snappy spin that sent a fully recovered Habeas Corpus scampering for the safety of the lazaret.

About the Author

LESTER DENT

LESTER DENT spent most of his youth in the arid wastes of Wyoming, which was once the bottom of an unknown ocean and whose soil is littered with fossilized prehistoric sea life. Despite having been raised on a ranch, he was more interested in pirates than cowboys. Reading pulp magazines he discovered in the bunkhouse, Lester became fascinated with adventure in distant lands, especially having to do with the seven seas.

When he began writing, Dent’s first published story,
Pirate Cay,
was set in the Caribbean. “It was about the sea although I had never seen an ocean,” he later admitted.

In March of 1933, less than three months into his Doc Savage writing career, Lester and his wife, Norma, booked passage on the
Mauritania,
which sailed from New York to the West Indies. The cruise ship stopped in Trinidad, Venezuela, the Lesser Antilles, Panama, and Havana, Cuba, Seeing first-hand the haunts of the old Caribbean pirates, Lester vowed to one day return in a boat of his own and hunt for sunken treasure.

Dent purchased the forty-foot auxiliary schooner,
Albatross,
in May, 1934, and spent the rest of the year learning to sail, traveling from City Island, New York to Nova Scotia. But his ultimate goal was to take the
Albatross
to the Caribbean Sea. During the Winter of 1934-35 and again in 1936, Lester lived on the boat, plying the Caribbean, headquartering at the City Yacht Basin in Miami, Florida.

A colleague once described him vividly as he was in those days. “He was like a corsair come to life. He was tall and he was brawny. And he was industrious. He knew mining and navigation.” Dent searched for treasure with a diving helmet and magnetic metal detector and crewed several yacht races.

Lester’s days living on the
Albatross
lasted only three years. And although he never found any sunken treasure, it was a memorable period in his amazing life.

A few years after he sold the
Albatross,
the ship went aground on a reef off the coast of Haiti and was sunk. The schooner lived on in Lester Dent’s fiction, however, from Doc Savage to his famous Oscar Sail stories written for
Black Mask.

About the Author

WILL MURRAY

DESPITE having grown up in two different Massachusetts coastal cities, Will Murray is not much of a sailor. In his youth, he loafed on assorted sail craft and powerboats off the Massachusetts coast and in the Chesapeake Bay. Back in the 1970s, he had an opportunity to crew aboard a sloop sailing to Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas. But he foolishly declined it. Or perhaps not so foolishly, since he’s a confirmed landlubber.

But you can’t make a career out of writing under the name of Kenneth Robeson without penning your fair share of sea stories. Most of Murray’s have, fortunately for him, been posthumous collaborations with expert sailorman Lester Dent, so he had a little bit of help along the way.

He’s never been to the Caribbean, but Murray has explored assorted islands off the Florida Gulf Coast, from which experiences he drew some of the descriptions recorded in this novel.

From
The Frightened Fish
to the well-received
Skull Island,
Murray has sent the Man of Bronze around the globe by sea in everything from a submarine to a Chinese junk.
Phantom Lagoon
is only the latest such seafaring venture. He’s already planning another,
The Secret of Skeleton Reef.
No doubt more lie beyond the dancing blue horizon….

About the Artist

JOE DeVITO

JOE DeVITO’S cover for
Phantom Lagoon
has its origins in a lifelong love of fantasy, science fiction, and dinosaurs. As far back as he could remember, Joe has been drawing and sculpting along the lines of both the natural and imaginative worlds.

Born on March 16, 1957 in New York City, DeVito formally pursued his art interests in college, graduating with honors from Parsons School of Design in 1981. He went on to the Art Students League in New York City. With famed anatomist John Zahourek, he continued his anatomical studies, concentrating on biped and quadruped comparative anatomy.

DeVito quickly tapped into some of his favorite subject matter professionally, and has been working with Pop Culture and pulp icons for decades. Over the years he’s painted or sculpted a pretty good cross-section of the best of them. These include King Kong, Tarzan, Doc Savage, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-man, and even
MAD
magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman. He has illustrated hundreds of book and magazine covers, painted several notable posters and numerous trading cards for the major comic book and gaming houses, and created concept and character design for the film and television industries. His Spectrum poster painting has become the revered international art annual’s logo, which led to DeVito being asked to sculpt their annual awards trophy.

Recently Joe sculpted the official 100th Anniversary statue of
Tarzan of the Apes
for the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate. Previously he had sculpted King Kong for the Merian C. Cooper Estate, Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman for Chronicle Books’ Masterpiece Editions, and several other notable Pop and pulp characters. Additional sculpting work ranges from scientifically accurate dinosaurs, a multitude of collectibles for the Bradford Exchange in a variety of genres, to larger-than-life statues.