Read Online Exploits by Mike Resnick - Free Book Online

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,