Dent Lester - Trouble On Parade

“Brother,” Mix said, “you'd better find Jane! And I mean find her before anything ugly happens to her.”

“Ugly?”

“Like this.”

Mix made a gesture of drawing her finger across her throat.

Doc found the implication that Jane might have her throat cut sobering and shocking. “You think she's in that kind of danger?”

“I know she is!” Mix said, nodding violently.

“Just why,” Doc asked, “do you know it?”

“Because I know.”

“Come on, tell the whole story,” Doc directed. “If you want me to help your sister, you've got to cooperate with me.”

He watched Mix's reaction to his demand with growing amazement. Her emotions were strong ones. Strong enough to leave clearly discernible paths on her face. Mix wanted — he was sure — to talk fully and at length. And he thought for a moment — when hope widened her eyes — that she was going to do so. But the hope fled — chased by a harsh animal of fear — and her eyes dropped.

Presently she shook her head slowly. She was afraid to talk!

“You've got to find it out yourself,” she said.

“Afraid?”

She nodded. “You bet!”

Deciding to learn what dynamite would do to her emotions, Doc said, “By being a coward, you're going to be guilty of killing your sister, if she dies. Just as guilty as if you had murdered her yourself.”

This created all the effects he had expected. Horror, shock, terror rising to a violence that made Mix physically ill!

But as it had a moment ago, the fear came and sealed her lips.

“I guess I'm no good,” she said in a dull voice. “I'm afraid to talk.”

That, Doc Savage felt, was the final word. He leaned back, his expectations dying a hard death while he kept his face composed. He didn't think anything less than a miracle would get the story out of Mix. That which presented him with a problem.

He would have to try something else.

“You,” he said quietly, “are a sucker.”

“I love Jane, but I'm afraid,” Mix said, obviously fighting back tears.

“The whole lot of you are suckers,” Doc continued. “You see, I know about Si Hedges.”

She kept her eyes on the table. “I suppose you got it out of Disappointed Smith that he wasn't also Si Hedges.”

Doc shook his head.

“Disappointed Smith is the worst sucker of all,” he said. “Because the poor loud-mouth probably doesn't know what he is doing.”

He was sliding on thin ice in making this statement because it was voicing an idea almost too intangible to be a guess.

But he was gratified at the startled expression on Mix's face. She stared at him in alarm!

“Say! How much do you know?” she demanded.

Doc decided this was a place where the truth would be mistaken for a lie.

“I don't know a thing,” he said.

“If you know they only got Disappointed Smith to …” Mix stopped, and for a moment she fought down terror.

“You're lying! You know the whole story!”

Doc gave her an inscrutable look, hoping this would help convince her he really knew his way around in the jungle of mystery.

Mix's alarm grew!

“Do you know what they did to Si Hedges?” she demanded.

“That,” Doc said, “is going to be taken care of.”

“You know where Hedges is!” she gasped.

Doc continued to look enigmatic although he wondered profoundly whether she was referring to Si Hedges in reasonable health or to his body.

He didn't learn the answer at this point because Mix Walden suddenly gasped, “I'm afraid of you! I don't want anything more to do with you!”

She fled.

- — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Doc Savage remained seated only until Mix vanished through the door.

Then he sprang to his feet and hurried to the bar where Clarence — the proprietor — was taking repeated sips of ice water and feeling experimentally of his throat, as if to ascertain whether there were any leaks.

“Clarence, is there a back door to this dump?” Doc demanded.

“Side door,” Clarence said in a voice similar to two pieces of sandpaper being rubbed together.

“Thanks,” Doc said.

“Wait a minute,” Clarence croaked. “Got a gift for you. Because you're a friend of mine.”

He withdrew a flagon from under the bar and extended it.

“Here's a bottle of the same you had a drink of. The minute I saw how you enjoyed it, I said to myself: 'My friend will want to take home a bottle'. Compliments of the house.”

Doc accepted the bottle of lion-killer with a little bow.

“Thank you, Clarence,” he said.

He inserted the flagon of brew in his pocket as he left the establishment, feeling he might find some good use for it.

And in any event, the bottle — if grasped firmly by the neck — would make an excellent skull-cracker!

Doc Savage was able to pick up Mix Walden's trail and follow her. There was no particular magic about this because the streets in that part of town had apparently been laid out by some early-day settler who had — in deciding where each street should be — turned a blind ox loose and followed its meanderings. Doc took one chance, guessing that Mix would head toward the main part of town.

And this she did. By considerable sprinting and ducking and dodging, he kept her in sight until she reached the central business district where it was easier.

Eventually Mix disappeared into a second-rate flea-trap of a hotel. It was an even more disreputable looking hostelry than Mr. Flinch's Central House.

Doc Savage proceeded nearly to make a serious error in starting to walk directly into the place. He saw — just barely in time! — Mix Walden coming out of the lobby with 2 worried and dishonest-looking men. There was nothing for Doc to do but step 3 paces to the left, squat behind 2 large ash cans and hope for the best.

Mix and the 2 men paused at the stoop for a palaver.

“I don't see how the hell he found out,” one of the men said.

“Well, he did,” Mix said grimly.

“I thought we had him sewed up in jail,” said the second man.

“He's not in jail now,” Mix said.

“He didn't tell Inspector Carlew anything!” The man rubbed his jaw angrily. “If he knows so much, why didn't he spill it to Carlew?”

“Maybe because he saw Carlew is a nitwit.”

“Um-m-m-m-m.”

“I think you've got something there,” the second man told Mix. “Savage is an old hand at this sort of thing. And he probably wouldn't bother to ring in a lightweight like Carlew.”

“I wish to God,” the other man said, “that I was at the South Pole or some other nice safe place!”

The glimpse that Doc Savage had had of the pair had not been satisfactory, disclosing only that they were men of medium size and rather overdressed in a hard masculine way. The part about their being disreputable had been a soundly-based guess. He didn't dare take a second look at them now. But from their voices, he surmised they were from some midwestern city — possibly Chicago — and not from the "upper" social stratum.

Mix asked, “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

“If we could only move Si Hedges before Savage gets to him, it would be a help.”

The second man said, “That's our only chance as I see it.”

“Let's get it done!” the first said urgently.

Fortunately they walked to their new destination and did not look back too often.

- — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

The house wore its history on its face.