Chapter VIII

49

STRANGE FISH

“Now know less than did,” was finally his verdict about his state of mind.

“Good Lord, this is confusing,” Paris said. “What on earth could a fish have to do with this?”

Doc frowned thoughtfully. “You say the dying man, Porter, wanted to know if you had it?”

“Yes. He seemed to think I, or we, should have received it.”

“Did you?”

“Receive a fish? No.”

“Have you recently received anything?”

Paris made a bewildered gesture. “Oh, I have received lots of things. You know how it is when you are in the hospital and have a lot of friends. They send you things. I was in a hospital for WACS for quite a while, and I got lots of flowers and little gimcracks and things.”

“But no fish?”

“No fish.”

PARIS began getting some food together for them. Monk noticed with considerable admiration, that she knew how to cook. The kitchen and raw material facilities of the lease shack were limited, but Paris was throwing together a nice meal. Monk was impressed. It always astonished him when he discovered a very pretty girl could cook.

Paris, however, was preoccupied. When she was not busy with the food, she stared thoughtfully from the window. Something was rattling around in her thoughts.

Finally she said, “Mr. Savage, when you traced down the threatening telephone call you got in New York, you found a little sheep of a man. And he showed you a picture he said was of his brother, Chapman, whom he blamed for making the call to you.”

“Yes?”

“You said Chapman had an upstanding thatch of dark hair, domineering eyes, and was thick−necked and somewhat sullen looking?”

“Yes.”

“I wish,” Paris said, “that I knew more about how this rascal brother looked in the picture.”

“If there were a pencil around here,” Doc told her, “I might supply that.”

Johnny Toms grunted, got up and found a pencil and a ten−cent writing tablet. Doc took these. He went to work sketching. As an artist, he would probably never produce any work that would hang in the Metropolitan.

But he was fairly adept at sketching, although his drawing ran to the caricature. He was inclined to exaggerate the character points. This was good, in the present case.