Exploits Read online

  I was still some fifty miles out of Peking when I managed to land a ride in the back of a truck that was hauling bales of hay into the city. It was getting on toward winter, and I didn't have no overcoat, so I just kind of burrowed into the hay and decided to catch a quick thirty or forty winks.

  I was awakened by a tall, thin Englishman jabbing me with his cane.

  “You!” he said. “Get out of there, and be quick about it!”

  I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and saw that he was pointing a revolver at my middle, which got my attention right fast.

  “What were you doing in there?” he demanded, and as I climbed out I saw that he had the driver out of the cab, too.

  “Mostly, I was being woke up by an Englishman with a gun,” I said. “If this is a holdup, brother, I got to inform you that I'm a man of the cloth who's taken a temporary vow of poverty. I ain't got nothing to my name but the clothes on my back and my copy of the Good Book.”

  He turned to the driver and jabbered something in Chinese so quick that I couldn't follow what he was saying. The driver, who looked scared to death, nodded his head and grunted.

  “All right,” said the Englishman. “You can go.”

  “Go where?” I said. “I don't even know where I am.”

  The driver said something else, and this time it was the Englishman who nodded and grunted, and a minute later the driver hopped back into the cab and took off.

  “Now how am I gonna get into the city?” I said.

  “I'll drive you,” said the Englishman. “Where are you going?”

  “Peking.”

  “I mean, where in Peking?”

  “I ain't figured that out yet,” I said. “Just getting here was effort enough.”

  He peered at me intently. “You've never been here before?”

  “As God is my witness.”

  He kept on staring at me. “And you're really a man of the cloth?”

  I held up two fingers and pressed them together. “Me and God are just like that,” I assured him.

  “Excellent!” He walked me over to his jeep, which we both got into. “What's your name?” he asked, as we headed off toward Peking.

  “The Honorable Right Reverend Doctor Lucifer Jones, at your service. Baptisms and funerals done cheap.”

  “How would you like the opportunity to help me defeat Satan Incarnate, Reverend Jones?” he asked.

  “Satan Incarnate?” I repeated.

  He nodded his head vigorously.

  “He lives in Peking, does he?” I said.

  “Peking is his headquarters, but he has residences all over the world.”

  “How many residences?”

  He shrugged. “Fifteen, twenty, who can say?”

  Which made the odds fifteen or twenty to one that he wouldn't be at home today, and I got to thinking that maybe I could appropriate a few Satanic artifacts for the local pawn shop.

  “Sure,” I said. “Standing up to Satan is one of the very best things I do, me being a man of God and all.”

  “Excellent!” said the Englishman. “It's been a long, lonely battle. But with you on our side, we just might win.” He paused for a minute. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Sir Mortimer Edgerton-Smythe.”

  “Please to meet you,” I said. “Who else is on our side?”

  “There's just you and me,” he said.

  “And how many are in the opposition?”

  “Who can say? Surely thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands. Perhaps millions. Have you ever heard of Doctor Aristotle Ho?”

  “Can't say that I have.”

  “He is the fiend who heads this secret organization,” said Sir Mortimer, his eyes blazing with hatred. “His father was a Grecian ambassador, his mother the daughter of a Chinese warlord. Nothing is known of his childhood. We do know that he spent three years practicing dentistry in Hangchou before he began his nefarious career by taking over the leadership of the local tong. From there he spread out, assimilating one criminal organization after another, until today he is the most powerful villain on the continent. His tentacles are everywhere, Reverend Jones. They reach not only into Peking, but to the capitals of Europe itself. He dreams of worldwide conquest, and he is more than halfway to his goal, and yet so careful has he been, so circumspect, that almost no one has ever heard of him.”

  “You've met this Doctor Aristotle Ho?” I asked.

  “Twice,” said Sir Mortimer. “The first time was in England, where I prevented him from stealing the Crown jewels. The second time was in Chunking, where I barely escaped with my life.”

  “I assume you're working for the British government?”

  “That's correct.”

  “Why don't you guys just march in an army or two and blow him away?” I asked.

  “We're operating in a foreign land, Reverend Jones,” he said. “We can't just send our troops in and destroy him. Our only hope is to prove that he is guilty of breaking international law, and then arrest him.”

  “And how do you plan to do that?” I asked.

  “The dragon is the key to it.”

  “Dragon?”

  “Doctor Ho keeps an enormous dragon on his estate,” began Sir Mortimer.

  “There ain't no such things,” I said. “They're just imaginary beasts, like dinosaurs and unicorns and honest redheads named Bernice.”

  “That's what I thought, too, until I saw it with my own eyes,” said Sir Mortimer. “But it exists, and it's the way we shall bring him down.”

  “You plan to feed him to this here dragon?” I asked curiously.

  He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Britain is a nation of laws. I intend to use the law to put an end to his villainy.”

  “How is a dragon gonna help you do that?” I asked. “I thought they didn't do much except eat knights and virgins and things like that.”

  “This dragon eats just about anything that moves,” answered Sir Mortimer. “The truck in which you were riding belongs to Doctor Ho; it was carrying hay and grain to fatten the cattle he feeds to the dragon. That's why I inspected it; I wanted to see if he was smuggling anything else into his fortress.”

  “You still ain't told me how the dragon is gonna cause Doctor Ho's downfall,” I said.

  “I'm coming to that,” said Sir Mortimer. “Every year Doctor Ho ships the dragon to a different city for the Chinese New Year festival: Honk Kong, Shanghai, once even San Francisco. The dragon remains for a week, and is then shipped back. Last year he shipped it to Rio de Janeiro.”

  “So?”

  “Reverend Jones,” he said triumphantly, “there are only seventeen Chinese in Rio de Janeiro—and eleven of them don't even celebrate the New Year! The man is obviously smuggling something, and if we can just find out what it is, we can put him behind bars for life!”

  “When's the next Chinese New Year coming up?” I asked.

  “Soon! The dragon is due to be shipped out tomorrow.”

  “Exactly what do you think he's smuggling, Sir Mortimer?” I asked.

  “That remains to be discovered.”

  “And just how do we plan to discover it?”

  “Tonight, after dark, we'll sneak into the dragon's enclosure and examine both the beast and its cage. If there's any contraband there, from drugs to jewels, we'll find it—and that will be the undoing of the insidious Aristotle Ho!”

  The only reason I didn't hop out of the car right then and there was because I didn't believe in dragons. I figured Sir Mortimer was like so many other Englishmen I'd met, who had a passion for foreign lands but never remembered to properly protect his head from the vertical rays of the sun, and was now just a bit on the dotty side.

  So you can imagine my surprise when we drove out to this huge estate after dark, and the first thing I heard was a roar that was like unto a volcano erupting.

  “Good!” whispered Sir Mortimer. “We're in time! They haven't shipped him off yet!”

  I opened the door. “Well, Sir Mortimer,” I said, “it sure
has been nice knowing you, and if you ever need spiritual comforting, why, you just be sure to look me up.”

  I started walking back in the general direction of Peking, but he ran around the car and grabbed me.

  “Just where do you think you're going?” he demanded.

  “Where's the dragon?” I asked.

  “Right over there,” he said, pointing to the left.

  “Good,” I said, heading off to the right. “I'm going this way.”

  “I need your help, damn it!”

  “You need a short list of funeral prayers for crazy Englishmen,” I said. “Little yellow guys who want to take over the world don't bother me none, but I ain't going into no corral with no dragon.”

  “I thought you were sworn to combat evil wherever you found it.”

  “I didn't swear to go hunting it up when it's peacefully minding its own business in its pasture.”

  “My people have posted a million-pound reward to the man who brings Doctor Ho to justice,” he said desperately. “I'll split it down the middle with you!”

  Which put a whole new light on things.

  “Well, my tabernacle does need a new alter,” I admitted, “along with walls and floors and pews and a steeple and a ceiling. You got yourself a deal, Sir Mortimer.”

  “Good! Let's get busy.”

  He led me over to a huge paddock with a high fence around it.

  “He's inside, in the barn,” whispered Sir Mortimer.

  “How do you know?” I asked, kind of nervous-like.

  “If he was outside, he'd have heard us by now, and would be roaring and spouting flames that would illuminate the whole area.”

  “Just how big is this here dragon?” I asked.

  “Perhaps half a city block.”

  I was about to ask if that was a long New York block or a short Macau block when it suddenly occurred to me that it didn't really make an awful lot of difference, given the current situation.

  Sir Mortimer led me around the paddock to a broad driveway that led to an oversized barn.

  “You're sure this is the only way to get the goods on Artistotle Ho?” I asked as he reached out for the door.

  “Just don't make any sudden movements,” he said.

  “Uh ... I don't wanna sound like I lack confidence in this here operation, Sir Mortimer—but have you ever searched a dragon before?”

  “As a matter of fact, I've searched this dragon four previous times,” answered Sir Mortimer. “Each of the past four years, just before he's shipped out, I've gone over him with a fine-toothed comb. I've checked his harness for jewels, I've gone over every inch of his cage, I've even gone through his stool in case Doctor Ho is trying to ship some contraband inside him.”

  “And you ain't never found nothing?”

  “Never,” he admitted.

  “Then why bother doing it all over again tonight?” I asked.

  “Because I'm convinced that the answer lies with the dragon.” He frowned resolutely. “I'll just have to be more thorough this time.”

  The building shook with another roar.

  “If you've done this before, you don't really need me,” I suggested.

  “Oh, I've always had help,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  He nodded. “Poor chaps.”

  He opened the door and pulled me inside before I had a chance to ask what happened to them. Given the sight that met my eyes, that was probably all for the best.

  There was just one stall in the barn. It was made of steel bars, and it was maybe 200 feet long and 100 feet wide, and while it was filled with straw and food troughs and water drums, what it was mostly filled with was a dragon. He was green on top, bright yellow on the bottom, and scaley all over. The second I looked at him I decided he was big enough to eat a couple of dinosaurs for lunch and still be ready to polish off the Eiffel Tower or some similar tidbit for dinner. He had the longest, ugliest face I ever did see, with big red eyes the size of basketballs, and a nose that kept snorting smoke.

  “Good evening, Cuddles,” said Sir Mortimer gently.

  "Cuddles?" I repeated.

  “It's my pet name for him,” said Sir Mortimer. “It makes him seem less formidable.”

  Cuddles roared again, and a flame a dozen feet long shot out of his mouth and barely missed us.

  “They really shouldn't keep him on straw bedding,” noted Sir Mortimer. “He's likely to set the place on fire.” He paused. “Hmm ... I suppose if we don't find the contraband, I could always report Doctor Ho to the local branch of the S.P.C.A.”

  “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.