Doc Savage: El terror purpúreo

# Doc Savage: "El Terror Purpúreo" (The Purple Terror)

Kenneth Robeson's Doc Savage adventure opens in a Manhattan skyscraper where two visitors—Baron Dimitri Mandl, Calbian ambassador, and an elderly peasant woman—simultaneously seek the aid of the bronze-muscled adventurer. The woman claims her son needs Doc's surgical expertise for paralyzed legs. Mandl requests protection for his threatened life. When the woman reveals a small red marble disc to Mandl in Doc's outer office, the baron panics, recognizing it as a secret agent's signal, and flees. The woman reveals herself as a Calbian agent who deliberately deceived the baron into believing Doc opposes him. Mandl sends an encrypted radiogram to a ship, then boards a luxurious private yacht to escape. While fleeing into open ocean with all lights extinguished, a massive explosion erupts around the vessel, apparently destroying it and killing first officer Lacy.