22

DOC SAVAGE

out and yelling for a hundred dollars a week “Laundry marks,” I said. “That won’t and no work?”

help you.”

“You mean I’m a bum?”

Not discouraged, he got on the tele-

“I mean you are making noises like phone, talked to some expert in the police one.”

department, and made a liar out of me.

“I don’t know what the hell started this,”

“The suit was cleaned the last five I yelled. “But I got a couple of medals that times by a shop in the eleven hundred block says I did this nation a service. Now it owes on Lexington Avenue,” Savage said.

me service, what I mean.”

He telephoned the cleaning shop pro-

“Who is the nation?”

prietor at home, but the fellow was out on a “Huh?”

party. He called the police, and got them “Think it over,” he said. “If you and the looking for the man.

other ten million aren’t the nation, you might He handed the coat fragment and tell me who is.”

pocket to Monk, and said, “Run a chemical That was all of that—except that I hap-and microscope test on the cloth and the pened to wander into the big room where the pocket scrapings. It might give us some-books were, and while I was looking to see thing.”

whether there were any at all with titles I Monk Mayfair didn’t look to me as if he could understand—it was entirely scientific had brains enough to run a test on anything, stuff—I came across a little display case. It unless it was to run his eye up and down a wasn’t conspicuous, back in a corner. It was pretty leg. There was less than an inch be-full of medals. I got a funny feeling. There tween his eyebrows and his hairline.

was everything from that little blue ribbon We had a visitor then. Doctor Morand with the stars on it on down, and I mean it Funk Hodges, chairman of the doings at the made me feel down, to the couple I had. I Parkside-Regent tonight. He had a thin thought maybe, at first, he’d warmed a swivel young man in tow, and was acting as if he chair for them. The trouble with that idea intended wringing the latter’s neck a bit later.

was, you didn’t get purple hearts for a swivel The thin young man had wet lips, a pimple on chair pinching your bottom. And he had four!

his neck, and was wearing a large scare.

There was a little leather folio containing “Tell them, Wilfred,” Doctor Hodges some of the citations, and I read a couple. He said ominously.

hadn’t been in any swivel chair. I didn’t have Wilfred had more trouble with his much to say for a while.

words than a guy juggling a lighted match in a powder factory. He, it seemed, was the banquet secretary, the one who sent out the MONK MAYFAIR came back. He had invitations.

the part of Albert Gross’ coat I’d torn off, and A man had paid him a hundred dollars a question. “Any word from the shyster law-to mail four invitations to Miss Paula Feni-yer?” he wanted to know, and looked wor-song, Mr. Albert Gross, Mr. Alec McGraff and ried—while trying not to look worried—when Mr. J. B. C. McCutcheon. And, of course put told there had been no news from Ham their names on the guest-list. The man who Brooks.

had spent the hundred was Mr. McCutcheon.

For my money, the piece of coat wasn’t The taller and redder-faced Mac.

going to do them any good. I’d looked it over, “Wilfred, you’re fired!” said the good and all it had given me was three invitations Doctor Hodges. “And I am going to kick you a to the Reception. I figured it was a dopey good one in the pants.”

waste of time, going back uptown for it.

He sounded funny, the dignified way Monk said: “I checked with old Doc he said it, but at the same time as if his Hodges, the chairman, about how the four of mouth was full of knives. He was an eminent-them got invited to the Reception. He’d won-seeming old codger, quite likeable. And so dered himself, and he’s finding out. He’ll call.”

help me if he didn’t lead Wilfred out in the Doc Savage went over the coat frag-hall, and we could hear him put his foot ment. He became interested in the inside of against Wilfred’s seat. It sounded like a good the coat pocket, and cut the pocket out with a one.

razor blade.

Doctor Hodges came back in, sat down and took off his shoe and examined his foot NO LIGHT TO DIE BY