Chapter VIII

50

STRANGE FISH

He reproduced, as nearly as he could from memory, the face of the sheep's rascally brother, Chapman.

He showed this to Paris.

The effect surprised everyone.

“Bill!” she gasped. “That's Bill!”

Chapter IX

THE omelette Paris was cooking on the stove sizzled softly. The coffee color was pleasant. Outside, over the sound of the cooking, the chugging of the lease pumps and the squeaky grunting of the pump lines which ran to the oil wells, all made a lazy background for suspense. For suspense had certainly come into the cabin, and suddenly.

Doc Savage, confused, dug around in his memory of the report Monk had made of his investigation of Paris Steven's background. He recalled that Paris had an uncle named Bill Hazel.

“Your Uncle Bill?” he asked.

She nodded. “Uncle Bill Hazel. The sketch looks just like him.”

Johnny Toms grunted. “That guy!” he said. Evidently he didn't have an exalted opinion of Uncle Bill Hazel.

Doc Savage said, “All the dope we have on Bill Hazel was that he got into a scandal a few years ago when he was accused of swindling someone in a Wall Street deal. He had to leave the country.”

“You've been investigating me!” Paris said.

“Naturally. No reflection on you, however. We did not know you, so we were finding out what we could.”

She nodded. “Well, I suppose you want to know more about Uncle Bill.”

“Yes.”

“He was my mother's brother. My mother's family name was Hazel. Uncle Bill would be”—she paused to probe her memory—“forty−six years old, about. He is the youngest of the family.

“Bill was always a sort of a scamp. He is a suave fellow. You wouldn't think that from his looks, because he gives the appearance of being crude and brutal. But he isn't. He is as smooth as honey in milk.

“Bill is the mental type. He is inclined to judge people entirely by their brains, and his heroes were always people who made a mental sort of a living. Promoters, writers, stock manipulators, inventors. His admiration for brains mounted to a fetish. I think that did more than anything else to make Bill a—well—a shyster.

“There is no doubt that Bill was a crook, but he was genteel about it. He didn't go out and rob people obviously. He just took it away from them, and did it so slick sometimes that they didn't quite know what had happened.