Dent Lester - Trouble On Parade

“It sounded like a shot,” Doc admitted. “Isn't there a law against discharging firearms in the town limits?”

The clerk said there was.

“But the yacthsmen like to take potshots at fish. And there's nothing much you can do about it,” he added.

“Getting too close to someone with a gun,” Doc agreed, “is to invite being shot at.”

“The fish never seem to learn that,” the clerk said.

He and the other hotel man departed.

Jane eyed Doc Savage suspiciously and demanded, “Why didn't you tell them someone took a shot at you?”

“That,” Doc said, “might have been hard on your nerves.”

“You call that chivalry?”

“Perhaps.”

“I call it a threat,” she said grimly. “If you had told them you were shot at, you're implying that they would have arrested me as an accomplice. Isn't that what you're saying?”

“Excitement,” Doc said, “is making you forget yourself.”

“I …”

“It's making you forget to be quarrelsome.”

“I …”

“What you need,” he said, “is a cup of coffee. That's what we both need, I imagine.”

The stare she gave him — he was pleased to see — was bewildered. He thought he had her confused. And he liked that. Usually women confused him and he appreciated the novelty of turning the tables for once.

Made almost happy by his satisfaction, he bustled around, finding the galley, locating the coffee pot, pumping water into it, and starting the gas burner. He remarked, “This is a very home-like boat, isn't it? So frequently these extremely fast craft have cramped accommodations.”

He began measuring the coffee.

The quarrelsome young woman recovered some of her former manic with an effort and said, “That's no way to make coffee! What are you trying to do? Make paint-remover? One spoonful of coffee to the cup is right. Not five!”

“You brew and I'll serve,” Doc said gallantly.

The cups he selected were — fortunately — white. Which was also the approximate color of the powderwhich he extracted from a phial that was in a small case with other glass phials in his pocket.

The powder — after he poured it into the cup he intended giving her — was not very noticeable. And he had the added good luck to be able to pour her coffee first so that she did not notice the powder.

“This is terrible coffee,” she said. “You ruined it before I took over.”

“What you're tasting,” he suggested, “must be the 'acid' in your own disposition.”

She seemed pleased and drank it all while trying to think of something quarrelsome to say to him.

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At the end of half-an-hour, Jane was not entirely asleep. But she was sufficiently knocked out from the effects of the potion he had administered that he no longer had to restrain her physically.

In the interval, however, she realized she had been drugged and managed to scratch his nose, kick both of his shins, and bite the palm of the hand which he was forced to clamp over her mouth to muffle her attempt to yell. Groggy now, she stared at him with vague rage and her resistance (what there was) was not very well coordinated.

“Young lady,” he told her, “I have plans for a conversation with you which — unfortunately — time does not permit right now. There is a character named 'Disappointed Smith' who requires attention before it gets too dark to find him. So I'm going to put you 'on ice' until I return.”

He doubted if she understood him.

He scouted the ship's lazaret — the one that was a wine cellar. He found it well stocked and selected a dark rum noted for its odor . He applied a couple of spoonfuls of the beverage to the young woman's frock, then replaced the bottle satisfied that one whiff would convince anybody she was "crocked".

She was heavier than he had expected — a good 130 pounds. He walked with her up the dock toward the swanky hotel.

The entrance he made into the hotel was amorous-seeming enough to embarrass him. Although he made it through a side entrance and — with an affectation of discretion — sent a bellboy for the desk clerk.

“The young lady,” he explained, “has over-indulged slightly. I would like to obtain a room where she can sleep it off. And I would prefer to do this as discreetly as possible.”

The hotel was displeased. He surmised that he was going to be thrown out and hastily gave his name. Which was effective to a limited extent. At least he got the room. However, an assistant manager accompanied him to the room and by frowning an unspoken reminder that young ladies were not permitted gentlemen in their rooms without benefit of a marriage certificate.

Doc made Jane comfortable.

“This is very kind of you,” he told the assistant manager, who showed no enthusiasm.

Doc Savage left the hotel … went to the Zipper … checked the fuel tanks and found them full … cast off the springlines and started the engines … got out the Yarmouth harbor chart and headed out to sea. The boat, he found, was capable of remarkable speed.

Later he locked the wheel for a short time and went below to find and examine the owner's certificate … whereupon he felt some alarm. The boat didn't belong to Jane Walden. It belonged to someone named Stanley K. Foreman.

Apparently he had stolen a boat. This was piracy— a serious crime!

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

He thought he might be able to reach Disappointed Smith about nightfall since this was the season when the days were long and the utter crystal clarity of the superheated sky promised that daylight would extend its fullest.

Provided, of course, that the phenomenal red-whiskered Neptune was still swimming and had resisted the blandishments of would-be rescuers and newsreel photographers. Doc trusted — and rather believed — that Disappointed Smith would still be swimming.

Roaring like a powerful airplane, the express cruiser kept little more than her stern on the sea. The craft had been designed — as to hull and power plant — with nothing but unadulterated speed in mind. And its designers had done a good job because there was probably not another seaworthy vessel which could have kept up with her. The boat was as powerful as Smith was reported to be.

Doc Savage gave the subject of Smith some thought. Discounting what he supposed to be lies which he had been told about Smith's prowess, the red-whiskered young man still stood out as physically remarkable. He was much more interesting as a subject for thought in other respects. Doc did not believe that Smith was insane. He didn't believe Smith's ancestors in the primeval past had necessarily been fish. And he didn't think Smith was swimming to Bermuda. That was all cockeyed. But he didn't feel that Disappointed Smith's reasons for taking the swim would turn out to be cockeyed.

It would be safe to bet, Doc believed, that it would develop that Smith was paddling in the ocean. And at just that particular spot in the ocean. And for perfectly sound and sane reasons. Doc wasn't exactly sure why he was convinced of this. The feeling having congealed as a result of untenable processes in his subconscious mind which had not yet come to the surface in his consciousness. That was probably the way a psychiatrist would explain it.

Anyone else would say it was a hunch.

Finding Disappointed Smith proved to be no more difficult than locating an Income Tax collector on March 15 th.

He was the most conspicuous object in that part of the ocean due to the presence of a cabin cruiser, a yawl, a staysail rigged schooner, a sloop, and 2 Nova Scotia dinghies. All were circling the spot, together with 3 airplanes overhead and another seaplane resting on the water. Atop the latter, a young man — wearing his cap backwards — was taking pictures with a 35mm hand movie camera.