Exploits (7 page)

“How in the world do they ship something like this?” I asked.

Sir Mortimer pointed to a number of barred cage sections piled up against the wall. “There's his traveling cage,” he said. “They'll assemble it tomorrow morning and then drive him into it.” He sighed deeply. “Well, I daresay we'd best get to work.”

“Couldn't we just kind of examine him from right here?” I asked, positioning myself directly behind Sir Mortimer.

“No,” he said. “If the contraband could be spotted from outside his cage, it
would
have been.”

“What makes you so sure there
is
any contraband?” I asked.

“There
has
to be,” answered Sir Mortimer firmly. “It's the only way Doctor Ho can finance his far-flung enterprises. I know all his other sources of income, and they simply don't amount to enough. No, Reverend Jones, it's
got
to be here!”

And with that, he opened the door to the stall, and, taking me by the arm, pulled me inside.

“I'll check out his feet,” said Sir Mortimer, pulling out a flashlight. “You'd be surprised what can be hidden inside nails this size.”

“What do I do?” I asked nervously, as the dragon turned his head to face me.

“He's wearing a halter on his head,” said Sir Mortimer. “Make sure there are no jewels attached to it.”

“I can't see none.”

“Check the underside of the leather.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“I'm perfectly serious.”

I took another look at the dragon, which looked like it was just itching for a little snack of charred missionary.

“You
got
to be kidding!” I insisted. “You don't expect me to—”

At that instant the dragon roared again, and I just barely ducked the flames that shot out at me.

“Ah! I see they've chemically treated the straw so it can't catch fire,” said Sir Mortimer. “Too bad. So much for the S.P.C.A.”

He went back to examining the dragon's toenails, and I took a tentative step toward the dragon's face.

“Nice Cuddles,” I said. “Cute Cuddles.”

Cuddles glared at me and growled. No fire came out, but I damned near choked to death on the smoke.

“Sweet Cuddles,” I said, taking a couple of more steps that brought me right beneath his face.

“Careful now,” said Sir Mortimer, pulling a hammer and an icepick out of his pocket. “This may hurt.”

He stuck the icepick up against one of the dragon's toenails and banged on it. Cuddles let out another roar that could be heard all the way to Sioux City.

“Damn it, Sir Mortimer!” I yelled.

“Sorry. Just being thorough.”

I turned back to Cuddles, who was still staring at me.

“Now, just take it easy feller,” I said. “I just want to look at your harness.”

I reached up to let him smell the back of my hand, like you're supposed to do with dogs and such. He took a sniff and practically inhaled my whole arm.

“Sir Mortimer!” I hollered.

“Quiet, or you'll wake the whole fortress!” hissed Sir Mortimer.

“But my arm's stuck in his nose, and he won't give it back!”

Sir Mortimer nodded his head sadly, without looking up from the dragon's toenails. “Yes, that happened to poor Archie, too.”

“Who was poor Archie?” I asked, trying to pull my arm loose.

“The assistant I lost on my second—or was it my third? No, definitely my second—inspection of the dragon.”

I looked up at Cuddles, who was staring at me with a kind of stupid expression on his face.

“Okay,” I said. “Fun's fun. Now leggo of my arm.”

Cuddles just kept looking at me and not doing much of anything, and it occurred to me that dragons maybe didn't breathe more than once every ten or twenty minutes.

“Sir Mortimer, I really could use a little help here!” I said.

“Not now, Reverend.”

I yanked once or twice more, to no effect. Then I started twitching my fingers, just to make sure they were still attached, and suddenly Cuddles let out with a sneeze that blew me halfway across the stall.

“Stop clowning around,” said Sir Mortimer, taking a look at me as I rolled to a stop. “This is serious business.”

Right at that second I would have been hard pressed to tell you which of them I hated more, Cuddles or Sir Mortimer, but I think Sir Mortimer was in the lead. In fact, the only reason I approached the dragon's head again was because I knew Sir Mortimer wasn't going to let me out of that barn until we'd finished our search.

This time I knew better than to stick out my hand. In fact, the more I studied old Cuddles, the more I got to wondering how
anyone
approached him, and that led to my wondering how they got him into and out of the barn and into his cage, and that led me to think that someone had to have trained him to obey some simple commands. So I looked him right in his red eyes and said, in the sternest voice I could muster under the circumstances, “Sit!”

And damned if he didn't sit right down on his haunches.

“What did you do, Reverend?” asked Sir Mortimer, running to my side.

“I got a way with dumb animals,” I explained to Sir Mortimer. “Now stand back and give him room. Down, Cuddles!”

Cuddles collapsed in a heap.

“Amazing!” said Sir Mortimer.

I started going over the harness, while Sir Mortimer examined whatever it was he was examining, but we had to admit after another ten minutes that there wasn't nothing hidden on Cuddles.

“I think I'd best examine his bedding next,” said Sir Mortimer. “Do you think he'll be willing to follow you outside?”

“I can't see no reason why not,” I said, sliding open the door to his pasture. “Come, Cuddles.”

Cuddles almost trampled Sir Mortimer as he got to his feet and bounded out into the pasture behind me. He was feeling right frisky, and he galloped once or twice around it before I noticed that he was starting to spout a little fire and I told him to stop. Then I saw a couple of lights go on in the fortress up on the hill overlooking the pasture, which didn't bode no good, and I figured that if I was gonna get in any kind of a set-to with Doctor Aristotle Ho and his friends that the safest thing to have on my side was a dragon, so I told Cuddles to stand still, and then I ran to his south end and climbed all the way up his tail and back until I was sitting on top of his neck.

That made me feel a mite safer, even though he didn't smell none too good, and I waited for Sir Mortimer to finish going through the bedding and come out, but when he finally showed up he did so in the company of three or four mean-looking Chinamen who were pointing guns at him, and following them was a thin Chinaman with two-inch fingernails and a droopy mustache dressed all in black satin pajamas.

“Good evening, Reverend Jones,” said the thin Chinaman.

“I don't know who you are, brother,” I said, “but if you take one more step toward me I'm turning this here dragon loose on you!”

For some reason that seemed to strike his funnybone, because he kind of chuckled and didn't back off so much as a step.

“I am Doctor Aristotle Ho,” he said, “and that is
my
dragon. I raised him from an infant, and he would no more attack me than the sun and moon would veer from their heavenly courses.”

He uttered a couple of terse commands in Chinese, and Cuddles kneeled down and stretched out his neck flat on the ground. There didn't seem much point to staying on him when he was like that, so I climbed off. Doctor Ho said something else, and Cuddles got up and meekly went back into his stall.

Now the insidious Oriental dentist turned to Sir Mortimer with an amused smile on his face.

“Trespassing, breaking and entering, stealing dragons,” he counted off. “What am I to do with you, Sir Mortimer?”

Sir Mortimer gave him a stiff upper British lip and didn't say a word.

“And
you
,” he said, turning to me. “Why should you be conspiring against me, Lucifer Jones? What harm have I ever done to you?”

“How'd you know my name?” I asked.

“I know all about you,” he replied. “Since the moment Sir Mortimer picked you up, I have had my minions tracing your every movement for the past five years. I know about your misadventures in Cairo and Johannesburg, about your arrests in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam and Mozambique, about your ivory poaching and slave trading, about the mutiny you led aboard a ship on the West Coast of Africa, about your being banished from the continent forever...”

“A series of misunderstandings,” I said. “Nothing more.”

“About your theft of the Empire Emerald in Hong Kong,” he continued, unperturbed. “I even know that Lo Chung has put a price on your head.”

“He has?”

“And now here you are, invading my property, even riding my dragon. Frankly, Reverend Jones, I suspect that you are something less than a credit to your church.”

“Let me tell you, one doctor to another, that I ain't never done nothing to be ashamed of,” I said heatedly. “And if you got a couple of hours and maybe a cold drink with just enough alcohol to pound the germs into submission, I'll be happy to explain my side of all them incidents you just recited.”

“Your explanation couldn't interest me less,” said Doctor Aristotle Ho. “In fact, under other circumstances I could have used a man of your peculiar abilities on my payroll.”

“Well, truth to tell, the facts didn't run all
that
far amuck,” I said quickly. “What kind of job did you have in mind?”

“Reverend Jones!” said Sir Mortimer sternly. “You are speaking to the most insidious villain in this part of the world!”

“I got nothing but your word for that, Sir Mortimer,” I pointed out. “All I know about this here gentleman is that he treats his animals well and he probably ain't on speaking terms with the local manicurist.”

“You interest me, Reverend Jones,” said Aristotle Ho.

“Are you going to believe that foul demon, or are you going to believe
me
?” demanded Sir Mortimer. “I tell you, Doctor Ho is planning the conquest of the entire world!”

Doctor Ho turned and stared at Sir Mortimer for a minute. “More groundless accusations, Sir Mortimer?” he said.

“Microdots!” shouted Sir Mortimer suddenly. “That's it! He's hidden microdots on the dragon's scales!”

Doctor Ho shook his head sadly. “Poor deluded man.”

“That's got to be the answer!” persisted Sir Mortimer. “We've searched everywhere else. Somewhere on that dragon's skin are some microdots that Doctor Ho is selling to our enemies in Europe. Probably the position of the Pacific Fleet!”

“If I let you examine every inch of my dragon, will that finally satisfy you, Sir Mortimer?” asked Doctor Ho.

“You haven't got the nerve!” said Sir Mortimer. “You know I'll find what I'm looking for!”

Doctor Ho turned to his men. “Make Sir Mortimer comfortable for the night, and when we ship the dragon tomorrow morning, make sure that Sir Mortimer accompanies him.” He walked over to Sir Mortimer. “It will take approximately seven weeks for the dragon to reach its destination. You will be given free access to him all the way there and all the way back.”

His men started dragging Sir Mortimer off.

“Well, that rids me of
his
unpleasant presence for the next few months,” said Dr. Ho, as he began walking back to his fortress.

“Hey!” I said. “What about
me
?”

“What
about
you?” asked Doctor Ho.

“I thought we were gonna talk a little business,” I said.

“I don't believe we shall,” said Doctor Ho.

“Why the hell not?” I demanded. “I took your side, didn't I?”

“The alternative would have been a swift and painful death.”

“What's that got to do with anything?”

“Reverend Jones,” he said, “you are perhaps the only man of my acquaintance with even less regard for the laws and morals of society than I myself possess. While I do not necessarily consider that a failing, it does make it difficult for me to trust you.”

“Well, as I see it, Doctor Ho, you got two choices,” I told him. “You can take me on as a partner, or have me as an enemy. Now, if we was to become partners and you really do take over the world, you could give me a little chunk of it, like say, Australia, and we could plunder it six ways to Sunday and split the take right down the middle. If, on the other hand, you decide you'd rather have me as an enemy, you're not only taking on me but the Lord as well, and take my word for it, the Lord can whip you in straight falls without working up much of a sweat.”

“There is a third alternative, you know,” he said.

“Yeah? What is that?”

He pulled out a little pearl-handled revolver. “I can kill you right here and now.”

Which, in my eagerness for gainful employment, was an alternative I had plumb forgotten to take into account.

“You look pale, Reverend Jones,” said Doctor Ho. “And your knees are starting to shake. I fear you must be coming down with fever.”

“Well, maybe I'll just mosey back into Peking and lie down for a week or two,” I suggested hopefully.

He nodded. “It would be best.” He reached out a bony hand and took mine in it. “Let us part friends, Reverend Jones.”

“That suits me more and more as I come to think on it,” I said sincerely.

“I am glad to have had this little chat with you,” he continued. “You are a most interesting man. I have the distinct feeling that our paths will cross again.”

“You do?”

“Yes. And next time the outcome may not be so pleasant.”

“You still plan to conquer the world?”

“That is a very indiscreet question, Reverend Jones,” he said. “Let me answer it this way: whatever my plans may be, Sir Mortimer will never thwart them again.”

“You mean there ain't nothing hidden on the dragon or in his cage?” I said.

“That is correct.”

“Then how come Sir Mortimer is dead convinced that you're smuggling something out every time you ship the dragon?”

“Sir Mortimer is right,” said Doctor Ho with a smile. “The poor fool cannot see the forest for the trees.”

“Doctor Ho,” I said. “Whatever happens in the future, we're parting friends tonight. Just between you and me and the gatepost, no friend would keep another friend sleepless for days wondering what the hell he was shipping out in that cage.”