Doc Savage: Phantom Lagoon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (5 page)

She had earned the nickname by buzzing one of the European passenger dirigibles as it had docked at Lakehurst, New Jersey, flying her tiny personal plane, dubbed the
Hornet.
In an effort to upstage the event, and grab headlines for herself, she had flown rings around the slow-moving airship. When the European government had lodged a formal complaint against the reckless aviatrix, Henrietta Hale gave a radio interview, during the course of which she expressed a choice opinion of that country’s war-mongering dictator.

The dictator was not pleased. He promised that if Henrietta Hale ever crash-landed in his country, she would be stood up before a brick wall and shot as a spy.

After that, she was Hornetta Hale. She did her best to live up to the nickname. Her speech became salty and her sharp tongue infamous. The American public couldn’t get enough of her exploits. This went on for years.

Eventually, she simmered down and was heard of less and less. The spreading war in Europe was accorded much of the blame. People who had enjoyed the dangerous life of Hornetta Hale vicariously through the rotogravure newspaper sections were now preoccupied with real danger. She was, in a word,
passé.

HORNETTA HALE was still on the minds of Doc Savage and Monk Mayfair as they tooled one of the bronze man’s sedans along a country road in upstate New York. Doc was at the wheel.

The sedan was typical of the type of machines Doc Savage preferred. It was subdued, unobtrusive. The paint job was not flashy. The motor, however, was an eight-cylinder dynamo capable of speeds in excess of one hundred and eighty miles an hour. The steel body was bullet-proofed, as were the windows. Tires were composed of sponge rubber; they could not be flattened by nail or bullet.

There were other aspects of the sedan that were also remarkable. The hydraulic brakes were of the bronze man’s invention, as were the airplane-style shock absorbers.

It was these latter innovations that Doc Savage was testing at present. For this was the sedan’s maiden run.

“Oh boy!” said Monk happily. “Some day for a drive in the country. Ain’t that right, Habeas?”

The apish chemist scratched the head of a peculiar dwarf pig that was sitting on his lap. This was Habeas Corpus, who possessed a body that was undersized and huge ears that were oversized.

Roused by his master’s touch, Habeas climbed up and leaned his long inquisitive snout out the passenger window. Slipstream filled his ears like sails, making them spread like wings. The ungainly shoat seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.

“The machine seems to be performing as expected,” noted Doc as he whipped through winding country switchbacks.

“Say, Doc, you hear any more out of that Hornetta Hale?”

“Nothing after we put the young lady out of our office the other day,” the bronze man replied as he took a sharp turn at hair-lifting speed. No expression of concern crossed his metallic features. Doc rarely showed emotion. It had been schooled out of him at an early age.

“What do you suppose she wanted?”

“Given her past as a wild woman,” the bronze man said, “probably publicity, or something equally foolhardy.”

“Mebbe so,” the apish chemist returned. “But she ain’t been heard from since she came off that Caribbean isle. What do you suppose that was all about?”

“Hornetta Hale,” said Doc Savage, “has a knack for becoming stranded, marooned, or otherwise landing in the center of attention.”

“She sure was a publicity hog in her day,” Monk agreed, giving Habeas’ back a vigorous scratching. “Maybe she done it to herself to grab off some headlines. I still wonder who those two guys were.”

“Hornetta Hale was rumored to have gone broke after her last escapade,” Doc Savage offered.

Monk grinned. “Maybe it was bill collectors who stuck her on that sandpile.”

The sedan had been barreling along at a surprising clip, given the twisting road. A professional race car driver would have sworn that no man-and-car combination could have held the road at the speeds at which the bronze man navigated the turnpike. Yet Doc Savage drove with an ease of handling that verged on the superhuman.

That skill was no more in evidence than when the sedan slid around a hairpin turn and, abruptly, there was a truck van blocking the road. The rear was open, the doors flung wide, and a steel ramp had been lowered.

There was no going around it, and precious little room in which to stop. Monk Mayfair grabbed the door frame with both hairy hands and squeezed his piggish eyes shut. Habeas, more intelligent than most dogs, scooted for the floorboards.

Doc pressed the brake pedal with a smooth, sure tap of his oxford-shod foot.

Slewing not at all, the roaster slid to a stop, its front bumper jutting just over the bottom of the waiting ramp.

“You may look now, Monk,” Doc suggested quietly.

By this time, the hairy chemist had clapped his hirsute hands over his homely face. He dropped them. His jaw sagged cavernously.

Staring into the yawning mouth of the van interior, Monk muttered, “I sure don’t like the looks of this….”

Monk Mayfair had little chance to digest the view. For zooming up behind them came barreling a sturdy milk delivery truck. It struck their rear bumper. With a clash and clang of steel, the sedan was knocked half way up the ramp.

“What the blue blazes!” Monk howled.

The milk truck roared into reverse, stopped, then came at them again. This time it pushed the subdued machine fully into the van interior.

It was that slick. The milk truck spun back, and out popped a peppery blonde. She rushed up to the rear of the van, and with surprising speed, pulled a pin that caused the ramp to drop free.

That was sufficient to prevent to sedan from backing out safely.

There were two swinging doors affixed to the van body. The blonde threw one, then the other shut. Then she bolted them tight, adding a sturdy brass padlock for good measure. That took care of any last chance for escape.

Climbing in the van’s cab, she gunned the motor to life. The van roared off, its captured cargo jouncing in back on immobilized tires.

“Wouldn’t work for me!” Hornetta Hale cried gleefully. “Hah! I’ll
make
’em do it!”

THE van lumbered along for perhaps a quarter hour. Behind the wheel, Hornetta Hale was talking to herself.

“I knew that big bronze bohunk was overrated the minute I laid eyes on him,” she sniffed. “Sure, he has a reputation. Probably hired himself a good press agent.”

Presently, the van approached a grade. The blonde firecracker proved that she could have made a fair living as a teamster. She double-clutched up the hill, reached the top and slid down the summit, foot off the gas, allowing gravity to pull her machine along.

“Doc Savage, my fancy foot!” she bit out.

During the climb, the truck gave a mighty jounce just before reaching the hilltop. The jounce was accompanied by a commotion such as might be produced by a pig being fed alive into a meat grinder. A compressed procession of piggy squeals, grunts and other porcine sounds filled the van interior, then abruptly ceased.

“What the hopping hell was that!” exclaimed Hornetta Hale, sounding a little like a teamster now. She peered out the side mirror, but saw nothing. For she had begun her slide down the grade, and became busy keeping the van on the road. The graded dirt road behind her was no longer in view.

When the road smoothed out, she fed the engine gas and the van continued its progress. The piggy cacophony continued intermittently, finally settling down.

Before long, Hornetta pulled onto a side road that ran through unkempt weeds until it reached a clearing where an old barn stood slowly falling into ruin.

For some reason—simple homespun thrift probably—farmers have a tradition of letting old disused barns succumb to the elements rather than paying to demolish the structures.

This one was in the early stages of decomposition. The weatherboard sides had been stripped of all vestiges of paint by time and rain and wind. The roof presented a profile like a broken-backed carcass. Obviously, a beam had caved. The sides were solid barnboard, however. And when Hornetta Hale stopped the van and got out to run the door open, it still operated, although its big hinges squeaked in protest.

Dusk was falling now. Hornetta drove the van into the barn and darkness swallowed the big machine. Then, jacking a bullet into the chamber of an automatic she reclaimed from the front seat, she stormed around to the van and addressed the closed doors.

“Listen, you mugs! I have a gun and I ain’t afraid to use it.” To prove her point, she fired a single slug into the barn roof. Old hay and sawdust filtered down from above. “If either of you overrated clowns try to jump me, it will just be too damn bad, see?”

No response came from the padlocked van body.

Hornetta pressed on. “Now I’m going to open up these doors and we’re going to have us a good old-fashioned pow-wow. No tricks, either of you. Or else. Get me?”

Still no reply came from within.

“No tricks,” Hornetta repeated, “or it’ll be
pow!
And then
wow!
I know how to turn loose bullets, and I know where to shoot a man. Right in the belly where it hurts most.”

Her bravado was met with even more silence.

Hornetta seemed to hesitate. Her blue eyes narrowed suspiciously.

Finally, she gathered herself and, unlocking the big padlock, threw open the doors.

In the dimness of the barn, the interior of the van was a box of gloom. Still, one could see into it. There was sufficient light for that.

What Hornetta Hale saw—or rather did
not
see—was enough to cause her stubborn jaw to hang open. Her flinty eyes struck sparks. The words that came tumbling out of her mouth would have done credit to a mule skinner.

For the interior of the van into which she had forcibly introduced a two-ton sedan was utterly and undeniably empty!

“I don’t believe it!” Hornetta snapped. “I do
not
believe it!”

Incomprehension seemed to seize her voice, her expression and her mind. She stood as if stupefied. Then, succumbing to an irate anger that brought hot color mounting to her cheeks, Hornetta yanked a flashlight from a pocket and shone it inside.

The beam disclosed nothing but the quilt-hung sides of the interior.

It was impossible! Hornetta knew that mere minutes before, she had locked the sedan within. She had felt its weight and drag as she piloted the van to this destination. True, the last portion of the trip felt lighter, but…a sedan cannot be made to melt away into thin air, she knew. And yet one seemingly had!

Hornetta Hale reached for a handhold, levering herself up and into the back, determined to investigate every inch of the van’s boxy body. Her mind was running to tricks with mirrors when she distinctly heard the powerful roar of a machine outside.

Jumping down, she went to investigate.

If astonishment had ridden her pretty if hard features before, it roosted there for good now.

For up the dusty road came a familiar subdued sedan. At the wheel was the homely face of Monk Mayfair. He was grinning from ear to ear. The grin looked a mile wide. Beside him, in the passenger seat, was a pig. It stood up on its hind legs, forepaws resting on the dashboard. It seemed almost as if the pig were grinning, too.

The sedan pulled up and braked.

Hornetta Hale simply exploded. “How the holy heck did you get loose!”

The pig opened its mouth more widely. And seemed to speak.

“A magician never reveals his tricks, honeybunch.”

“A pig and his ventriloquist!” Hornetta retorted. “Where is the big bronze guy?”

From behind, came the surprising answer. “You are not the first to attempt to capture us by that same artifice,” said a quietly confident voice that Hornetta recognized just before strong bronze fingers seized her neck and performed movements that caused the world to release its grip on her.

Monk jumped out of the auto, beaming.

“She never heard a thing, thanks to Habeas.”

Doc Savage nodded. “The shoat’s chorus prevented Miss Hale from hearing the sedan slide out the van doors during that last climb.”

“New shocks worked like a charm on landin’,” Monk agreed. “Easy enough to run so close behind her that she never knew we were on her trail until that last turn. Our silenced motor couldn’t be heard under the roar of that truck. The hard part was pickin’ the padlock on the door bar with the truck moving along at a good clip.”

“Do not forget that while we were trailing her so closely, you had to clamber onto the hood in order to reclose the van doors, so she would not suspect a thing,” reminded Doc.

“It was nothin’.” The hairy chemist eyed the troublesome Hornetta lying on the ground. “Guess we go to work on her, huh?”

“Miss Hale,” said Doc Savage grimly, “has quite an awakening ahead of her.”

Chapter V

TALL TALE

HORNETTA HALE WOKE up in what she first thought was a zoo.

She was in a cage. She realized that almost at once. The cage was of good size. It had to be, in order to contain both Hornetta and the monkey.

Now Hornetta Hale had done her share of exploring. She had been chased by baboons, set upon by orangutans and once a howler monkey had run her up a tree. The monkey that squatted at the other side of the cage resembled no species of anthropoid she had ever seen or heard of.

In some respects, it rather resembled a miniature version of Monk the chemist. It possessed the same gimlet eyes in a broad face. Even the color of its fur—a rusty red—brought to mind the apish chemist.

“What are
you
doing here?” she asked thickly. Then her head began clearing. She changed the question.

“What am I doing
in
here with
you!”
she exploded.

Hornetta looked around. It was not dark exactly. There was some light. It seemed to be coming through a haze, or something.

“Hello. Is anyone home?”

Silence.

The monkey approached. It wore a curious expression.