Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain Read Online Free PDF Page B

wastes, the man now presented a picture that was nothing if not comical.
    Evidently, one other thought so, for no sooner had the faultlessly attired individual
     finished brushing the clinging remnants of snow from his attire, than howling laughter
     filled the space in which he stood.
    This came from a ridiculously wide mouth belonging to an individual who more resembled
     a caveman than a modern specimen of manhood. His bullet head, sloping shoulders and
     bowed legs might have been donated by a gorilla. Rusty red fur coated every visible
     portion of his anatomy, other than his broad, amused face.
    “Haw, lookit that!” he exploded. “Ham Brooks, Eskimo Barrister. Ain’t you a sight!”
      The speaker’s voice was disconcertingly squeaking, almost childlike.
    “Listen, Monk, you homely baboon,” the one addressed as Ham snapped. “I come from
     the finest Pilgrim stock.”
    “You’ve come a long way, then,” Monk said. “What you’re trying to tell me is that
     you’re blue-blooded?”
    Ham scowled at Monk malevolently. “Exactly.”
    “You may be so blue-blooded you can give a transfusion to a fountain pen,” Monk said.
     “But what does it prove? To me, you’re—”
    Abruptly, Ham let out a screech. His dark eyes were fixed on a button that was hanging
     from his coat by a single thread.
    “Drat!” he complained. “I’ve pulled a button loose. And I have no spare coat!”
    “Fashion plate!” Monk snorted. “You should hire yourself a tailor for a valet, and
     have him follow you around with needle and thread.”
    “I wish my New York tailor were here,” Ham grumbled.
    “I wish he was here instead of you,” Monk assured him.
    Ham Brooks, in addition to being an avid pursuer of the title of best-dressed-man
     in the country, was also Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, who had a reputation
     as one of the nation’s leading lawyers. Ham’s brain was as sharp as the faultless
     creases in his pants.
    Monk was better known as Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, an industrial
     chemist of remarkable renown. His resemblance to a simian cave-dweller would have
     caused a big-game hunter and an anthropologist to grab him by opposite wrists and
     have a tug of war over possession of the trophy.
    If Ham could get Monk locked up in jail, he would probably do it. Monk would do likewise.
     Theirs was that kind of friendship.
    Angling off to the left, Monk prepared to resume some task which Ham’s arrival had
     interrupted. He reached a radial-type airplane motor. Beside this stood a wheeled
     cradle. Apparently, Monk’s immediate problem was to get the motor on the cradle.
    He bent over and grasped the engine. He heaved. Cats seemed to arch their backs under
     his coat fabric as enormous muscles swelled.
    The motor hardly budged. It was too heavy.
    Monk gave it up, straightened, and looked around. At the far end of the hangar stood
     a lifting crane.
    “Guess I gotta rig the crane up to handle this motor,” Monk grumbled.
    He started away. A voice halted him.
    “Just a moment, Monk.”
    The voice was remarkable for its qualities of tone. Neither loud, nor particularly
     emphatic, the voice conveyed an impression of restrained yet unbounded power.
    The speaker dropped from the cabin of a nearby plane.
    At first glance, the man might have been mistaken for a statue of bronze metal. The
     bronze of his hair was slightly darker than that of his skin, and the hair lay straight
     and smooth as a metallic skull cap.
    Many features about this man were arresting. His eyes, for instance, were strange.
     They were like pools of flake-gold—a dust-fine gold which was swirled about continuously
     by tiny whirlwinds.
    That this bronze man possessed fabulous strength was evident from the tendons which
     cabled his hands and his neck. These resembled nothing so much as the rounded backs
     of steel files, except that they were the hue of forged bronze.
    Doc Savage wore a crisp white shirt, open at