Dust-Mouth poured wine out of a glass gallon jug. "This here's port. It ain't as good as sherry, but it's better than nothin'."
"I guess so," Doan agreed.
"Here's how," Dust-Mouth said. He raised the jug expertly on his forearm, and wine gurgled.
Doan tasted his, and Carstairs growled at him. "This is strictly business," Doan said. "Believe me."
"Glum," said Dust-Mouth, lowering the jug at last. "What say?"
"How about my ore location?" Doan asked. "I got it all right," said Dust-Mouth. He groped around in his overall pocket and extended a cupped, incredibly dirty hand. "Samples."
Doan got as close as he dared, and saw a drift of shiny particles hidden among the other visible debris.
"That there," said Dust-Mouth. "That right there will win the war for you. It's carbo-carbo-bezra... It's the stuff. You can look it up, and then take it to an assayer and ask him if it ain't. And do I know where there's plenty of it! Man, you can scoop it up with a steam shovel. Ain't more'n eighteen inches below surface. Millions of cubic yards. Pure."
"Where is it?" Doan asked.
Dust-Mouth looked all around him cautiously and tilted his head to listen with a sort of groggy concentration. The set had been provided with no windows, but whoever had made a hidey-hole out of it by nailing in a back wall had left a gap in the rough boards about two feet square. It was covered with a mildewed piece of burlap.
"Now we got to talk serious," said Dust-Mouth. "Now we got to strike us a deal. Pull up a little closer."
"I like it here," said Doan. "Go ahead."
"Doanwashi, this is gonna be hard for you to believe, but I'm tired of the desert. Fact. I'm just durned tired of dust and cactus and Gila monsters and all such. I crave to see rivers and creeks and green grass and corn growin' in rows. You ever consider what a purty sight corn is when it grows in rows?"
"I like it better in bottles."
"It ain't bad there, neither," Dust-Mouth admitted. "But what I mean is--I gotta admit it--I wanna go back where I come from and set. I wanta go back to Ioway."
"It's still there," Doan told him.
"You Japs figurin' on conquerin' it?"
"Oh, sure. We'll go through that way on the way to Washington."
"What you gonna do with the people?"
"Kill 'em."
"All of'em?"
"Oh, we'll leave a few. Have to have somebody to spit on when we feel mean."
"I'll tell you what I figure. I want some of that Ioway land. I figure it'd be nice to have a belt of it runnin' along the Mississippi from about Davenport up to about Clinton and about a hundred miles deep. That'd give me plenty of room to move around in, and I could use the river if I got tired of travelin' on the roads. I'd have to have some people to farm it, too, of course. I ain't gonna work."
"Naturally not," Doan agreed. "I guess we could arrange for you to have some peons."
"What's them?"
"Slaves."
"You mean, I wouldn't even have to pay 'em?"
"No."
"Man, you're makin' this sound like the stuff to me. Just think of me sittin' there like a king...Could you arrange that for sure, Doanwashi?"
"Right. If this ore deposit is what you say it is. Otherwise we won't even give you ten acres of Texas."
"It's there! There's a million tons of it!"
"Okay. It's a deal. Where's the ore deposit?"
"We got to shake hands first," Dust-Mouth specified cagily.
Doan took a deep breath and held it. "Okay."
"Now we got to drink on it."
Doan let his breath out and sighed. "Okay."
He raised his horn, and Dust-Mouth tipped the jug up on his forearm. The burlap sacking over the back window ripped with a little soggy sound, and in the same split second there was a sharp, smacking report.
The bullet hit the jug of wine and shattered it, and the whole of its contents cascaded down over the lantern. That was too much for the lantern. It went out with a weary gulp, and the darkness moved into the room in a sudden, silent rush.
Dust-Mouth screamed like a lost soul. Doan was up and on his way to the door, the Police Positive ready in his hand. He tripped and fell into the dresser and broke more of the mirror, and then Carstairs snorted, and he followed the sound to the door.
"Right," he said, nudging Carstairs on that side with his knees.
He pulled the door open and dodged to the left. Carstairs faded away in the other direction. Doan fought his way clear of the stairs and staggered into the side of a thatch-covered hut that collapsed with a soggy puff. He stepped over and through the hut, caromed off the edge of a platform, and then was in the open.
"Hi!" he said.
Carstairs' voice bellowed in answer. Instantly there were two more shots. Doan swore loudly and ran straight ahead. He slammed head on into a brick wall that gave way with a tearing crash.
"Hi!" he yelled.
Carstairs bayed. There was another shot. Doan saw the dim, sprayed flash of it this time and fired back, shooting high. The bullet hit something and snapped off into the air with an angry wheee.
A door made a hollow thump. Carstairs bayed angrily.
Doan plowed into another brick wall and went through it like Superman, spraying balsa bricks in all directions. Knee-high weeds clutched at him chummily, and he dodged under a hitching rack and rattled the length of a boardwalk. He whirled around the corner of a saloon front and came face to face with a decayed colonial mansion.
Carstairs was on the veranda with both front feet against the closed front door.
"Go around, you fool!" Doan shouted. "There's nothing behind it! It's a set! Left! Left! Hike!"
Carstairs' claws skittered on the porch, and he leaped over the railing at the porch edge and disappeared again. Doan ran the other way. The colonial mansion was edged cozily in against the front half of a yacht, and Doan squeezed in between them, breaking the yacht's anchor chain in the process.
"Hi!" he called.
Carstairs bayed straight ahead. Doan ran along the narrow street of an early English village, detoured around an igloo, and came out on the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street. He paused, blowing, and the iron side gate clanged to his right.
Doan went that way fast. He found Carstairs with his head stuck between the bars, peering vainly out and down the street.
"Get away," said Doan, pulling him back.
The gate opened inward, and Doan jerked at it. It was locked. Doan swore eloquently. He dropped his revolver in his pocket, took hold of two of the iron bars and heaved back. The lock didn't give, but the hinges did. They pulled loose with a shriek of tortured lath, and Doan went down with the gate on top of him.
Carstairs hopped nimbly through the opening and raced down the street. Still swearing, Doan crawled out from under the gate and went out into the street. There was nothing in sight but the Cadillac. Doan sat down on the curb, holding his revolver in his lap, and waited.
In about five minutes Carstairs came ambling out of the shadows and shook himself in a distasteful way.
"It's a damned shame you aren't a bloodhound," Doan told him. "I've got a notion to trade you in on one."
Carstairs merely looked at him.
"I wasn't so hot, either," Doan admitted. "Let's go pick up Dust-Mouth. He's probably having a katzenjammer all by himself in the dark."
They went back through the wrecked gate and down the lane around the mud puddle. Doan leaned under the stairs.
"Hey, Dust-Mouth. The enemy retired to a previously prepared position."
No one answered.
Doan went into the hideout. "Dust-Mouth."
The scent of wine was overwhelming. Doan took a match from his pocket and snapped it on his thumbnail. The sudden spurt of flame reflected gorily from the spilled wine and the pieces of shattered jug, but there was no sign of Dust-Mouth.
"Hey!" Doan yelled.
The echoes came back sullenly--alone.
"Oh, hell," said Do
an.
Chapter 13
EDMUND WAS BEHIND THE DESK WHEN Doan and Carstairs came into the lobby of the apartment hotel. He was working on a new radio diagram.
"A dame called you, Mr. Doan," he said. "I mean, a lady. I mean, she sounded pretty good to me."
"Did she have a name?" Doan asked.
"I guess so, but she didn't tell me what it was. She called you twice, and she said she'd call you back some more. She said it was important."
"Okay," Doan said. "I'll be home for awhile."
"Mr. Doan!" said Harriet.
She came in the front door, her eyes sparkling with eager energy. Blue trailed along disconsolately behind her.
"Have a nice ride?" Doan asked casually.
"Oh, we didn't ride. We walked. It was just wonderful. Wasn't it?"
"I'm tired," Blue said.
"Certainly, but it's a healthy tiredness. It's good for you to feel that way."
"My feet hurt..."
"They'll get used to it. Just think of all the hardships our poor soldier-boys are standing all over the world."
"I am," Blue said drearily. He nodded at Edmund. "Get me a taxi, will you?"
Harriet shook her finger at him. "Now you couldn't get a taxi in Africa or the South Sea Islands, you know."
"He probably can't get one here, either," Edmund told her. "But I'll try." He plugged in on the switchboard and dialed expertly.
"Where are you staying, Blue?" Doan asked.
"At the Clark Hotel."
"I'll call you the first thing in the morning," Harriet said. "Now you may kiss me good-night."
"Right here?" said Blue.
"Of course, silly. Edmund and Mr. Doan don't mind."
"I should say not," Doan agreed. "We'll find it very interesting."
Harriet put her cheek up, and Blue pecked at it warily. The effort completed his exhaustion. He backed up and sat down on a divan with a weary sigh.
"Tomorrow morning, remember," Harriet said. "Bright and early."
"Yeah," Blue answered hopelessly.
Edmund said, "The taxi company says maybe they'll send a cab and maybe they won't, depending on how they feel about it."
"I'll wait," said Blue.
"Good-night, dear," Harriet said. "Sleep tight."
"Yeah," said Blue.
Harriet tripped up the stairs, and Doan and Carstairs followed her. She was waiting for them at the top.
"Mr. Doan, I haven't really done any work for you. I really don't feel that I'm doing my bit."
"You're doing just fine," Doan told her. "Carry on. Chin up. Goodnight."
"Good-night, Mr. Doan."
Harriet went into her apartment, and Doan went on down the hall toward his. He was feeling for his key when Carstairs approached the door, put his nose against the crack under it, and sniffed once.
"Visitors?" Doan inquired.
Carstairs yawned.
"The Gold Dust twins," Doan said in a disgusted voice.
He opened the door. Ame was sitting in a chair facing it, and Barstow was lying on the chesterfield with his hat over his eyes.
"Well," said Arne, "where is it?"
"I don't know."
"What happened this time?"
"Somebody shot at Dust-Mouth and scared him green."
Arne stood up quickly. "Who?"
"That's the sixty-four dollar question."
"Didn't you see him?"
"No. I chased him, but he was too fast on his feet."
"Did he hurt Dust-Mouth?"
"No. And I'd just made him a present of part of Iowa, so I think he'll probably call me up again when he gets through shaking."
Arne breathed hard through his nostrils. "Probably! That's not good enough. We stayed out of the way. We gave you a clear channel. And now look. A fine thing! And you're supposed to be a smart operator!"
"Fire me," Doan suggested.
"We can do better than that," Arne said. "Or worse. You gave the knife that killed Free-Look Jones to the bellboy, by name of Joshua, in the Double-Eagle Hotel in Heliotrope."
"Did I?" said Doan.
Arne stared at him. "Haven't you any conscience at all? Did you want to get that poor devil convicted of murder?"
"We must all serve our country as best we can in these grim times," Doan said. "Is he? Going to be convicted of murder, I mean?"
"No. He has a perfect alibi. He was making root beer in the drugstore next to the hotel. He put some ether in it, and it knocked him cold. He couldn't possibly have been running around loose at the time Free-Look was killed. He couldn't navigate at all. The druggist carried him over and dumped him in the broom closet. Now they're looking for you."
"I thought they would be," Doan admitted. "But of course the government will protect me from being charged with any minor misdemeanors like murder."
"Ha-ha," said Arne.
Doan nodded. "Why don't you two go home and get a good night's rest?"
"We'll give you twenty-four hours more," Arne said. "Come on, Barstow."
"What happens after twenty-four hours?" Doan asked.
Barstow looked back from the doorway. "You were wrong before. That's the sixty-four dollar question. Cheer-o." He closed the door softly.
"I've got a good mind to write a letter to President Roosevelt," Doan said to Carstairs.
He sat down on the chesterfield and took off his shoes. He slid the Police Positive under the cushions, and then lay down on his back and stared gloomily at the ceiling. Carstairs stared at the ceiling, too, and then wearied of it and went to sleep in the middle of the floor.
Someone knocked gently on the door.
"What now?" Doan said, not moving.
The door opened, and Harriet looked in.
"Mr. Doan, I forgot to ask you. Did you take care of the matter of that dead man who was in your hotel room?"
"Oh my, yes," Doan said. "I managed things in my customarily brilliant manner."
"Well, why was he killed?"
"That's a military secret."
"Oh, I see. I don't suppose you can tell me who killed him, either?"
"I don't suppose I can," Doan agreed glumly. "You don't know how I wish I could."
"That's all right, Mr. Doan. I can stand the suspense."
"Yeah," said Doan. "But can I?"
The telephone buzzed.
"Ah-ha!" Doan exclaimed, jumping up off the chesterfield. He picked the instrument up. "Yes?"
"This is Edmund, Mr. Doan. At the desk. Woo-woo!"
"What?" said Doan.
"Oh boy! Wow! Wheel You got a visitor. Have you got a visitor! Mr. Doan, it's Susan Sally, and she wants to see you! Woo-woo!"
"Woo-woo!" said Doan. "Send her right up!"
He dove for the chesterfield and got hastily back into his shoes. He slicked his hair down and straightened his tie.
"What is it?" Harriet asked, startled. "Is something going to happen?"
"Probably not," Doan told her. "But you can't blame me for hoping."
Harriet watched him suspiciously. "Is it that theatrical person?"
"How did you know?" Doan demanded.
Harriet nodded slowly and meaningly. "I thought so. She said she thought you were a very interesting person. I knew what that meant."
"What?" Doan inquired.
"I knew she'd try to see you again. Do you want me to tell her you're busy or not here or something?"
Doan's mouth dropped open. "What?" he repeated incredulously.
"She's not the sort of person you should associate with when you're performing a dangerous and vital mission for your country. I don't approve of her at all."
"Your ballot is void," said Doan. "Would you mind running home and knitting yourself a muffler?"
"You're not going to see her alone? In your apartment? At night?"
"I certainly am," said Doan. "And that reminds me." He nudged Carstairs with the toe of his shoe. "Get. Go with the nice lady."
The Essential Works of Norbert Davis Page 47
