Dent Lester - Trouble On Parade

“Curiosity,” she said, “is what kills cats.”

“So they say.”

“Disappointed Smith and Si Hedges are the same fellow. And both of him are rascals!” she said grimly.

“I gather you don't like him.”

“That's correct gathering.”

“Do you,” Doc asked, “suppose he was contemplating swindling me?”

“He couldn't be contemplating anything else. Not and still be Disappointed Smith,” she said.

“I'm very grateful for that information.”

She decided to become angry about this and demanded, “Why should I care whether-or-not you get hooked? You're nothing to me. I don't even trust you. I never did trust big handsome guys who seem to know too well what they're doing.”

Doc Savage found that he was rather pleased with the difference in this young woman and most young women who usually didn't say what they were thinking when they talked to him.

“Does Disappointed Smith mean something to you?” he inquired.

“I had a date with the big thatch of whiskers,” she said. “I came up here about 10 o'clock this morning to tell him it was off — that I would rather date an alligator. He was upsetting the room, turning over that table and breaking the chair, and making a cut in his finger and letting the blood drip on the rug. He said he was fixing up a joke. Which I think was true.”

“Why do you think he would disarrange the room and put blood on the floor as a joke?”

Angry again, she said, “Listen, I know how Smith's mind works! Something like that fits right in with his idea of a joke.”

“I see.”

“I'm glad you do!” she snapped. “And in case you're wondering what I'm doing here, I came up about 5 minutes ago to tell the red-whiskered barrel of snakes I wouldn't date him!”

“Hadn't you already told him that this morning?” Doc inquired.

“I was going to tell him again.”

“Oh … you wished him to understand thoroughly you did not desire his company?”

She gave Doc a look of contempt and rage and said, “I didn't wish him to understand any such thing. I was going to date him because there's nobody that I enjoy insulting more.”

“Oh!” Doc was genuinely astonished.

“When I insult most men, it's like kicking a sheep. Like insulting you. No joy to it. But when you hang a nasty remark on Disappointed Smith, he reciprocates. He hands back as much as he gets. And frequently more. Quarreling with him is a pleasure.”

“Would you rather I would insult back at you?” Doc asked.

“You can try if you want to,” she said shortly. “But you wouldn't be any good at it. You weren't born to it. You have to be a born insulter.”

“What,” Doc asked, “is your name?”

“I don't see that it's your business. But it's Mix. Mix Walden.”

“Well, Miss Walden, it has been very interesting meeting you,” Doc said heartily. “However, this bloodon the floor isn't quite dry. And it seems to me that on an oppressively hot day like this, it should be dry by now if it was spilled there before Noon.”

She sniffed loudly.

“Disappointed Smith's blood would just be contrary enough not to dry,” she said.

Doc smiled. He walked slowly about the room, examining everything carefully, noticing that the evidences of a fight seemed rather genuine to be faked. But otherwise observing nothing else of value.

“Shall we leave?” he asked.

“I'll go as far as the lobby with you,” said Miss Mix Walden. “But no farther. I don't trust you. And I don't like you.”

“You can trust me not to become amorous,” he said dryly.

“If I thought you were a wolf, I'd encourage you. Then get a lot of pleasure out of sticking my thumb in your eye,” she snapped. “But you're a gentleman. And gentlemen are doormats. They don't interest me.”

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

Mr. Flinch — the manager — and his pomaded clerk seemed to have recovered their composures, Doc Savage noticed when he and the quarrelsome Miss Walden entered the lobby. He parted from Miss Walden in the lobby, assuring her, “Meeting you has been a fresh experience.”

“Goodbye, doormat!” she said angrily and departed.

Doc Savage looked after her with pleasure for he had enjoyed encountering her. He had also enjoyed meeting — if the plane incident could be called a "meeting" — Disappointed Smith. It was not often that he encountered such screwball characters. And he found it interesting.

There was a flavor of mystery that helped whet his interest, too. And he further suspected that one-or-more individuals had been telling him some whopping lies. But he didn't know who.

He caught Mr. Flinch's piggish eye. And the eye hastily fled elsewhere, whereupon he was tempted to go over and grasp Mr. Flinch's thick throat and give an imitation of the fabulous Disappointed Smith on the chance that this would frighten some truth out of the hotelkeeper. He wasn't positive Mr. Flinch had lied to him. But he didn't like Mr. Flinch. He was someone not even a mother could like.

Doc Savage decided that he was hungry. He noticed that the Central House Hotel had a dining room but concluded that there would be less likelihood of ptomaine elsewhere.

So he left the hostelry. The sunlight seemed brighter. As bright as diamonds, hurting his eyes! And he noted further that the stillness of the air had increased until it was tangibly unpleasant. The tree leaves were as motionless as if painted on glass. The air had a hot dry quality of being charged with heat from a furnace.

A visit by such heat, he recalled, was unusual in Nova Scotia in August. Doc recalled the swimmer and reflected that he, at least, would be benefited by the heat wave. Usually, the Bay of Fundy was not warm enough to make comfortable swimming. But this weather should warm up the surface water.

He began to look for a thermometer as he walked down the street, presently discovering one in a jewelry store window. He wasn't surprised that several persons were standing looking at the thermometer.

He looked himself. It was hot. It was hot enough to surprise him!

“It's quite a surprise,” remarked one of the observers, “to find the thermometer says it's hotter than you thought it was.”

“Yes, it is,” Doc agreed, noticing that the speaker was a lean, capable, well-dressed man with a fine-grained skin darkened to the color of walnut by the sun.

“A man,” the stranger said, “could avoid this heat.”

The fellow had, Doc realized, a rather hard, well-oiled voice that was somehow unpleasant.

“If he could find an air-conditioned restaurant, he could,” Doc agreed.

“There's another way.”

The man paused meaningfully … then added, “Now would be a good time for a man to get back to Philadelphia or New York or someplace where they don't have such hot weather.”

“Maybe it will cool off.”

“It won't.”

“I hadn't heard about the heat wave,” Doc remarked. “I've been traveling and haven't seen the newspapers or listened to a radio.”

“Just get here?”

“Yes.”

“If you're smart,” the man said, “you'll turn right around and go back. Probably be too hot for you here.”

The man then turned and walked off, leaving Doc Savage gazing after him quizzically and wondering if what he had just received was a not very thinly disguised warning. Or whether it had merely sounded like that because the man had a hard, oiled voice.

The man had a notch out of the top part of his right ear, Doc noted.

The broiled lobster and French fries in a restaurant named the Captain's Table were excellent. Doc Savage enjoyed them as well as the coffee which followed. It was as black as a pirate's soul and as strong as the legendary Disappointed Smith. The sum on the check was a little jarring. But he paid it and dropped one of the coins he received in change into the telephone. He got the Associated Press again.