Dent Lester - Trouble On Parade

“So you want to explain stealing my boat?”

“Yes.”

“That won't get you straight with the Law!” Foreman snapped. “You're still charged with drugging that girl.”

Doc nodded, hiding his pleasure at what he believed was the satisfactory turn events were taking.

“I know,” he agreed. “But I do not think they can prove I administered a drug to Jane Walden. No one saw me. On the other hand, I was caught red-handed aboard your boat.”

Foreman scowled.

“I'm too busy to talk to you now,” he growled.

“Perhaps,” Doc suggested, “if I became a guest at your hotel, you would find time to hear me.”

There was a wintry look in Foreman's narrow-lidded eyes.

“Okay,” he said. “Stick around.”

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

They were assigned 4 rooms in a row on the 2 ndfloor, Doc getting the middle one.

But the other three — Smith, Mix, and Hedges — seemed to have acquired a violent aversion to being alone. They all crowded into Doc's room and Disappointed Smith elaborately got down on his knees and performed a salaam to Doc.

“Allah be praised!” he said. “Without thy wisdom — oh Keeper Of The Wits — our names would have been as mud.”

“Cut it out,” Doc suggested. “The atmosphere around this hotel hasn't exactly got me in a funny mood.”

“I'm only half-kidding,” said Smith. “I think they had baked a quick cake for us down there in the lobby. But you were slick enough to give Foreman a temporary out. And that — I'm convinced! — is all that kept our entrails off the floor.”

Doc frowned at him. “Want to talk?”

Smith shook his head nervously.

Not pressing the point, Doc asked, “How about some breakfast in the dining room?”

“And make it easy for them to poison us?” Smith demanded uneasily.

Mix said, “They won't be that subtle. Don't worry.”

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

The dining room was well-occupied when they arrived. Many of the diners had been seated in the lobby during the conversation with Foreman.

Doc Savage ordered ham and eggs. And Mix, Smith, and Hedges nervously ordered the same thing. They were, Doc Savage saw, beginning to depend on him to such an extent that they automatically let him prescribe their eating. He didn't like that.

It indicated that whatever was here on the island — they knew or suspected what it was and Doc didn't — was definitely terrifying .

“You,” Doc told Smith, “should be ashamed of getting so scared.”

Smith wasn't impressed.

“You've seen little dogs dash up to big dogs barking like they were going to eat up the big dog, then stop all of a sudden? That's me. Little dog.”

Doc observed that various diners were beginning to finish their breakfasts suddenly and depart. Some of them had eaten almost nothing.

“We,” Mix remarked, “seem to spoil appetites.”

Doc Savage pondered. Whatever this was, it wasn't small because most of the occupants of the hotel seemed to be involved. He studied the guests as they hurriedly completed their breakfasts and departed. Or departed without completing them.

Doc was puzzled by a vague impression that he'd gotten at various times since arriving at the hotel — this being a feeling that something was familiar. It was the sort of sensation one gets when walking into a place that one visited years ago and forgot. Doc positively hadn't been on Parade Island before. So it wasn't the island or the hotel. He'd thought it might be the hotel furnishings. But he dismissed that.

Now suddenly he realized what it was. The guests!Because now he saw a guest he recognized.

The guest — a tall man with a downcast in one eye and a habitual pixilated smirk like a husband who had just kissed the maid — was Mr. George Winterwall, one of the most amiable rascals in the Nation. George was a confidence man with the gift of getting your shirt off your back and making you love it. George — Doc happened to recall — was being sought by the New York police so that he might explain how three Wall Street tycoons had lost considerably more than their shirts.

That was it! Some of the guests — if not all of them — were crooks!Probably some of the others weren't the gentleman that George was.

Doc was suddenly filled with more alarm than he cared for.

“Mix,” he said.

She jumped nervously. “Yes?”

“How do they communicate with the mainland? Telephone? Radio?”

“Radio,” Mix said. “But they won't let you use it.”

“Where is the transmitter?”

“Top floor of the hotel,” Mix admitted. “But I wouldn't try it.”

“What room?”

“A penthouse on the roof. Have you gone crazy?”

“You three,” Doc said, “had better go to your rooms and wait there. Plead that you were up all night and need sleep.”

Mix gave him a gray-faced, frightened look.

“Don't,” she gasped, “do it!”

Doc put down his napkin and prepared to stand.

“We need help here. And the police will be glad to give it. I think the police will be delighted at the idea of laying their hands on such fellows as George Winterwall and some others.”

Disappointed Smith moaned. “I was afraid that you'd start recognizing the crooks.”

Mix looked as if she were going to be ill.

“They'll kill Jane if you get them stirred up!” she wailed.

But Doc shook his head.

“Not the way I'm going to stir them up,” he said.

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

Doc Savage left the three at the table. He believed they were scared enough to do as he had instructed: go to their rooms.

Doc himself ascended the stairway as if going to his own room, passing a man who was carefully polishing the stair banisters and who was probably there to check on his movements. There was, however, no one in the hallway.

He had supposed that he would have to try doors until he found one unlocked. But he got a lucky break and discovered one standing open. He entered boldly and found the room unoccupied. He jumped to the telephone.

Waiting for the operator to answer, he worked his brain overtime trying to recall exactly how Stanley K. Foreman's voice sounded. He hoped that his ability as a voice mimic— which he had spent considerable time developing — wouldn't fail him.

Imitating Foreman's hard, oiled voice and unpleasant tone, he said to the operator, “Where'd they take that fat [so-and-so] Sam Keeler?”

He was pleased with his imitation of Foreman — particularly when the operator fell for it.

“Why … to '303', Mr. Foreman,” the operator said. “Is something wrong?”

“No more than was wrong already,” Doc growled and hung up.

He went to the door … assured himself the hallway was still empty … and strode to his room which was at the far end of the corridor and near the stairway that led to the upper floors. A man was also polishing woodwork on this flight of steps. Evidently they had a lookout posted between each floor.

Doc Savage decided he wanted to talk to the fat man who'd tried to accost him earlier — the man named Sam Keeler. But Room '303' would be on the next floor above and there was the obstacle of the lookout.

Doc went to the window and frowned when he was able to count at least 3 hotel guests loitering where they could watch the window. So climbing up the outer wall — which perhaps he could have managed because the hotel was constructed of such rough stone — was out.