Doc Savage: Phantom Lagoon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (32 page)

The bronze man arrived in time to discover Ham Brooks and Count Runo von Elmz engaged in an unusual duel just up from the immaculate beach where the great ground-traveling roots of the charred and blackened Philodendron groped in every direction like questing tentacles.

The Count evidently shrugged off the effects of the brief whiff of gas that had overcome him. He was, as always, immaculately dressed, his clothes as dry as if they had come off the washing line.

Ham was contending with his debonair foeman in a manner that defied all the proper rules of sword fencing. He was using the barrel of his cane, instead of the blade, which remained sheathed.

The Count was beating back with his own cane, so it was a combat of brute force, not blade wizardry.

The Count was somewhat taller, which seemed to give him a slight advantage. Aristocratic features fierce, he was banging down hard, again and again, attempting to break through Ham’s defenses as if wielding a Viking war hammer, not a stout walking stick.

Ham Brooks gave back as good as he received. The two stout barrels clashed and clattered against one another, flashing in the sun, as the two men pounded at each other relentlessly, neither one able to land a blow on his resolute foe.

Seeing that he was getting nowhere, and exertion causing him to tire, the Count decided to change the rules in mid-combat. He depressed the stud that caused the small needle of a blade to spring forth from the cane’s tip.

Charging, he attempted to impale Ham Brooks in the center of his chest, with the clear intention of transfixing the heart.

Enraged by this flouting of gentlemanly rules, Ham Brooks swiftly sidestepped. With a flashing series of moves, he suddenly came up behind the Count and laid the barrel of his cane against the back of the man’s close-cropped head.

The Count’s Tyrolean hat went flying in one direction while the hat’s owner stumbled forward and smashed his face into the sand. He did not rise again.

Planting the tip of his stick upon his defeated opponent’s unmoving back, Ham Brooks turned to offer Doc Savage a thin smile of triumph.

“Where are the others?” asked Doc.

“Monk and Long Tom are off chasing mermen,” Ham said casually, directing the tip of his cane toward the brush-furred crater.

Sounds of fists colliding with substantial portions of human anatomy came rolling down from the volcanic cone. One of Monk Mayfair’s tremendous war whoops could be heard.

Before very long, there was complete silence.

Monk Mayfair came down dragging two mermen by their finny feet, one in each hand. He was grinning to beat the band.

“Hiyah, Doc! I went fishin’ and look what I caught! This is the last of ’em.”

Lugging another, Long Tom added, “We caught them trying to sneak down on us. But it looks like somebody got to them first. They were in pretty rough shape. Not much starch left in any of them for a good brawl.” He sounded disappointed.

Doc replied dryly, “We had an encounter earlier.”

Long Tom deposited his defeated merman beside the one that Doc had earlier overcome. That first man was still unconscious. There was no fight left in the other two.

Doc Savage looked around, remarked, “Evidently, the gas which creates hallucinations remains effective for only a short period of time.”

Long Tom muttered sheepishly, “I found myself up in a tree when it wore off. Literally. It was very embarrassing.”

“No doubt it is extracted from this island, as was the laughing vapor,“ continued Doc. “Some of it must be seeping out of fumaroles in small quantities, odors masked by the smoky air, which would explain why Monk thought he encountered that eight foot tall Satanic King Neptune and Long Tom believed he saw a mermaid with Hornetta Hale’s features.”

“If that was a figment of my imagination,” Long Tom pondered, “how is it Honoria Hale later turned up with green hair?”

“As you were informed before I departed on my mission,” replied Doc, “that was my first clue that we were being eavesdropped upon. The Count and his men were inspired by Long Tom’s mermaid hallucination to cut and dye Honoria’s hair green, hoping to pass her off as her twin, Hornetta, in order to determine once and for all how much—or how little—we knew of the plot.”

Monk grinned. “My jaw almost dropped when you switched to the Mayan lingo and clued us in.” His beetling brow wrinkled. “Did you figure out how that tricky Count slipped on and off our boat without getting wet?”

Doc nodded. “No doubt he passed from the silent U-boat to our diving well wearing a free-diving suit, which he shucked after breaching the cruiser’s hull. In his hasty escape, it was a simple matter of taking the suit with him, so as to leave no trace.”

“It was unlucky for us that Pat failed to seal the hatch that first time she looked it over,” Monk allowed, picking up Habeas Corpus and giving the porker a vigorous scratching.

Ham Brooks inserted waspishly, “It was fortunate for that infernal hog that he shook off the effects of the equally infernal gas. Otherwise I would have been forced to trim strips off his miserable hide to make breakfast bacon. I am utterly famished.”

To which Monk growled, “If that ever happened, I would grab hold of your ears, jump on your shoulders, do a somersault, and pull your head off like it was your hat.”

There ensued another argument, but Doc Savage had no interest in that. He went searching for Honoria Hale.

A contingent of Coast Guardsmen had waded ashore about this time. The importance of their mission was underlined by the fact that they were being led by no less than the cutter commander.

Doc Savage told him, “Matters appear to be well in hand. All but one of the plotters has been apprehended.”

Doc led the Captain over to the peculiar pile of helpless foreign seamen.

The officer studied the half human, half piscatorial profusion, noted their brush haircuts, and took off his cap in order to scratch his head.

“Don’t that beat all…” he muttered.

“Free-diving suits,” explained Doc Savage. “When donned and secured tightly, they formed a sealed envelope, which contained sufficient air to permit ten to fifteen minutes of underwater swimming before the individual needed to surface for oxygen. Sewn into the webbed fingertips are jaguar claws—very deadly in a fight.”

The Captain nodded. “That, and the mystery submarine, go a long ways toward explaining some of the strange reports floating about the Caribbean these last few days.”

“The passengers who disappeared off the two liners were spirited off into that waiting U-boat,” Doc explained. “Its silent method of operation and camouflaged hull prevented the sub from being detected. All in all, a very elaborate ruse designed to confuse observers, and throw maritime authorities off the track of the true plot.”

Ham Brooks was hovering nearby and put forth a question, “Exactly what was their plot? I fail to fathom any of this.”

Doc Savage gestured out into the open ocean, toward the handsome yacht that had dropped anchor well away from the isle. They could read the name on the stern. It said:

WISTERIA

MIAMI, FLORIDA

“All of these efforts were aimed at sinking the Presidential yacht with all hands aboard,” explained Doc.

“Presidential!” bleated Ham, aghast.

“Blazes!” yelled Monk. “Do you mean the President of the United States is on that hooker over there!”

The cutter commander answered, “This is a state secret, of course. You all know that the President recently gave a speech about dealing harshly with foreign submarine raiders that have been sinking commercial and relief shipping in the Atlantic. Well, he decided he wanted a first-hand look at the Caribbean, where some of these raiders were rumored to be based in secret. That name you see is not the real name of the President’s yacht. It was painted over to disguise it—although that did not seem to fool Doc Savage, who recognized it from a distance.”

“Sort of a secret fact-findin’ mission!” muttered Monk.

“Exactly,” said the Captain.

HAM BROOKS twirled his dented and dinged sword cane jauntily and pointed the tip toward Count Runo von Elmz, who was being lugged to a waiting dory like a sack of spoiled potatoes.

“What was the motive for his heinous murder scheme?”

The cutter skipper answered that. “Some of the U-boat crew are already spilling. Seems all the official talk of sinking raiders in the Atlantic has got the head mustache over there worried that America would step in and settle the war. His theory was that if the President were to die, the new chief executive might think differently. Or think twice, unless he wanted to be the next target for assassination.”

Ham frowned. “I rather doubt that mad scheme would have worked out the way the Count planned for it to,” he drawled.

“An assassination started the last World War, you’ll remember,” agreed the Captain. “This old planet of ours is a ball of powder right now. And there are a lot of spots where an assassination would be the spark to touch it off. Consequences would be stupendous. A lot is hanging in the balance for America.”

At that point, two Coast Guardsmen returned, escorting Honoria Hale. They found her hiding in the mangroves.

The former blonde looked crestfallen, and when Doc Savage asked, “What have you to say for yourself?” she hung her head in shame. She was already in irons.

“Who is this?” demanded the Coast Guard Captain, noticing Honoria’s seaweed-hued hair.

“Honoria Hale,” said Doc. “The key to the entire plot. She evidently fell in love with one of the plotters. This man used her to obtain confidential information about the President’s secret trip, enabling the Count and his men to lay this diabolical trap.”

“Is this true?” questioned the skipper.

Honoria Hale, her pale lips trembling, mustered up enough strength to say, “I-I had friends in Washington society. I was in love. He-he got me to draw them out. We learned about the—”

That was all she could manage before words failed her.

The officer regarded her coldly, and said, “Well, you’re a traitor to your country, now, and liable to be hung for the offense of high treason.”

The effect of this cold declaration on Honoria Hale was stark. Rigidity seemed to wrench all through her.

Seeing this display, the Captain relented slightly. “Inasmuch as you’re a woman, and only an accomplice, they will probably give you life imprisonment instead.”

“I guess it was all for naught,” mused Ham. “Now that she and the Count are prisoners, they can never see one another again.”

Hornetta Hale said thinly, “It’s worse than that. She wasn’t in love with that old warhorse.”

Long Tom blinked. “No?”

“It was that guy who was chasing me, Pippel. He called himself Lancelot Lacy. He was the one who marooned me on the little cay in the first place—the skunk. He couldn’t bump me off, otherwise my sister might get wise, and then spill the beans. So he stuck me on that island, hoping I’d die of exposure and the papers would write me off as going the way of Amelia Earhart. Only I was too tough for them mugs.”

Doc asked, “You knew of the plot all along?”

Hornetta nodded. “Most of it. I needed some money for a venture and against my better judgment, I went to Honoria for some dough. She tried to give me the business, but I could tell sis was worried about something. I got her to cough up, and the next thing I knew I was snatched and stranded by Pippel’s Bundist Brown Shirts.”

“Which one was Pippel?” asked Ham.

“The one the Count had to blast when he was wounded so bad he couldn’t leave Long Island,” explained Hornetta. “That cold-blooded blueblood executed him with Honoria right in the next room. He was sore that Pippel had boasted of the plot to Honoria, which is why Pippel was so hot to stop me from reaching Doc Savage in the first place. He knew the penalty if the plan did not come off because of his big mouth. In the end, the louse paid it, anyway.”

At that grim reminder, the green-haired girl sank to her knees and buried her face in the immaculate sand. Her shoulders shook convulsively. Strangely, she made no audible sound.

Long Tom tugged at an oversized ear. “What I don’t get is why they didn’t kill either one of you when they had the chance.”

“They were going to,” Hornetta said tightly. “Don’t doubt that for a minute. But the Count knew if he did away with me, Honoria would go running to the authorities. That’s why they marooned me in the first place. When the papers broke the story of my rescue, Honoria put two and two together and took a train to New York to find me before the Count did. But they had a spy shadowing sis and he caught up with her before she reached Doc Savage. Later, after Pippel was plugged, they tried the same gag in reverse in the hope I wouldn’t go running to the G-Men. Only this time, their scheme was to pack her off to Brazil. Honoria gave me all this dope when we all ended up in that U-boat together.”

Ham frowned. “Why didn’t they do away with you both then?”

Pat Savage answered that one. “If their assassination plan had come off the way they figured it, they were going to shove all three of us out the torpedo tubes so that our bodies would be found with the ones who perished in the explosion. They thought it would add a touch of mystery to the grisly proceedings. Incidentally,” she added, “remember that ugly merman we all saw leaping out of the water that first night? That was one of the Count’s U-Men. They shot him out of a torpedo tube just to impress us, recovering him later. Those reinforced rubber suits are plenty tough.”

Her clear golden eyes went to Doc Savage.

“When did you finally figure out that the mermen were not real, cousin?”

“From the beginning,” admitted Doc.

“Oh, tell the truth, you know-it-all!”

Doc Savage replied calmly, “It was obvious from the first that the purported merman was not a genuine living creature.”

Pat cocked a skeptical eyebrow as the bronze man continued.

“The aquatic apparition displayed the tail of a bony fish, but the cartilage back-fin of a shark. The two are not found together in nature. It is evolutionarily impossible. Therefore, the merman could not be real.”