Chapter XII

72

STRANGE FISH

Bill Hazel's eyes turned fixed and glassy and his skin got the color of the lead in a pistol bullet.

“You did?” he said sickly.

“Berlitz said you were working for him,” Doc said.

“That's good,” Hazel said in a still sicker voice. Then Hazel shut the door in Doc's face.

Doc Savage thought: I was right about this! I do believe I was right about it!

He walked out into the night feeling much better.

Chapter XIII

THE fat man arrived shortly. The first awareness of him was the tobacco odor that clings to the clothes of a pipe smoker. Doc caught the smell as he lay in the blacker darkness under a spring wagon near Johnny Toms'

cabin. Doc had one ear to the ground listening for footfalls, an old Indian trick, but it had flopped. Ben Watt, the fat man, must be in sock feet, which it developed he was.

He had his shoes in one hand and a leather briefcase in the other, Doc saw when Johnny Toms opened the door of his cabin, after turning on the light at the fat man's soft knock.

“Turn the light out, you dope!” the fat man said bitterly.

Johnny Toms said, “Ugh!” He was transfixed for a moment. Then he blurted, “You better beat it! They're looking all over for you! Doc Savage is here. So are two of his men. You'd better not fool around with them!”

“Turn out the light, dammit!”

Toms extinguished the light. “Go away!”

“No. I got something for you.”

Toms was suddenly terrified. “What do you mean?” The fear in his voice was as real as words.

“Let me inside.”

“No, I—”

“Damn you, I've got your money here,” the fat man said.

Johnny Toms didn't say anything for a while. Then he opened the door wider. The fat man went inside. Toms closed the door.

Doc went around to the side of the cabin, to a window. The same window at which he had, earlier in the proceedings, watched Johnny Toms examine the fish. The window was still up. The hole he had made in the curtain was still in it. He could see and hear.