Doc Savage: Phantom Lagoon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) Read Online Free PDF Page A

bronzed giant of a man, but there was nothing beefy about his build. His neck sinews, the tendons in the backs of his long-fingered hands, looked as supple as bundles of violin strings. There was a flowing ease about his movements that indicated great agility and Herculean strength.
    Doc’s features were regular, and he had remarkable penetrating flake-gold eyes. His hair was bronze, slightly darker than the hue of his skin, and a disturbed lock of it hung down on his forehead. His big bronze body was encased in a white laboratory smock. The contrast between the smock and his deeply bronzed skin was arresting.
    “See?” muttered Monk in disgust. “Now you’ve disturbed Doc in the middle of his work.”
    “What seems to be the trouble here?” Doc asked in a noticeably well-modulated tone of voice.
    “This dish-faced ape told me I couldn’t see you,” Henrietta complained, flinging aside the sword cane.
    The bronze giant noticed the worse-for-wear Monk and Ham. “What on earth happened to you two?” he inquired.
    “I’d try explainin’,” the homely chemist muttered, “but it’s too embarrassin’.”
    Ham said nothing. He was contemplating his ruined attire as if it were burned and peeling hide.
    Doc took in the blonde’s severely sunburned skin, her loud and revealing outfit, which ran to polka-dots.
    “What can I do for you?” he asked.
    Henrietta composed herself and her voice.
    “Honestly, Mr. Savage, you have quite the reputation,” she breathed. “I read all about you in a magazine.” She batted her striking eyes. “I think you’re just the guy I need to help me.”
    The bronze man retained his poker face. Obviously, he was not susceptible to flattery.
    “This is new,” Henrietta murmured to herself. “A man who is impervious to feminine charms.”
    Henrietta experienced her first inkling that Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze, was something more than an ordinary man.
    Doc Savage belonged to a class of mortals who demonstrated that if a man set his sights upon a goal and devoted intensive efforts in the pursuit of that goal, astounding results might be achieved.
    In this case, Doc had been set upon the path to greatness by his parents, who entrusted him into the care of a succession of scientists and other renowned experts, with the firm and unwavering purpose of transforming the lad into a scientific superman.
    All knowledge, from science and medicine, to how to ride a horse and sail a sloop, as well as the rougher arts of combat, wilderness survival and speaking foreign languages, had been made available to him. And Doc had mastered them all, becoming in adulthood a greater expert in these respective disciplines that those who had tutored him.
    All of this strenuous activity had been channeled to a single noble purpose. Doc Savage had been trained for the far-ranging career he was following—righting wrongs which ordinary forces of law and order could not combat. This altruistic career—for Doc took no pay—sometimes took him to the distant and dangerous corners of the globe.
    “Trouble, Incorporated” might have been the name of the concern which Doc Savage headed. But it had no name, other than his own, for everyone knew that if you had troubles too large to handle, Doc Savage was the man to see.
    Hence, the arrival of Henrietta and her presumed problem was not a unique thing.
    Doc Savage appraised the blonde with his compelling flake-gold eyes. No emotion registered on his metallic lineaments.
    “Aren’t you the girl they found marooned on a tropic island?” he wondered.
    “Yeah, I’m the gal off the island,” Henrietta returned, “and don’t starting asking me my name or how I got here!”
    “Said her name was Henrietta,” said Monk, feeling of his face and hair.
    The girl stepped up to the bronze man and made fists at her sides. “I’ve got a proposition for you, big boy,” she said.
    “Proposition?”
    “Call it a job. And I’ll pay you plenty to do it—but no