Read Johnson Johnson 04 - Dolly and the Doctor Bird for Free Online Page B

I said, without hiding my feelings, “that through no fault of my own I have some personal stake in the matter.”
    “Quite,” said Johnson; and rising, he put his hand on the wheel and with a touch started the soft buzz of the engine. “But as you so recently pointed out, the emergency situation is perhaps more frequent in medicine than in portrait painting. And if ever I met a person who can take care of herself, it is Doctor B. Douglas MacRannoch.”
    It was 10:30 p.m. when I got home, and my father, as he often does when bored, had gone off to bed. There was a note by the telephone in his writing. It read:
Beltanno. Some American creep telephoned at the start of “The Fugitive” to invite you to golf at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning. I offered him $75,000 to marry you, but he says he just wants to play golf. Please keep your love life out of my “Fugitive
.” It was unsigned, but he had written beneath, as an afterthought,
Name of Broody
.
    I had promised Johnson two things: one, to tell no one what I had learned from him that evening, and second, to report any overture whatever from one of our suspects. I therefore telephoned the Coral Harbour Yacht Club and had Johnson brought to the instrument.
    “Brady has telephoned,” I said. “He wants to golf with me tomorrow. On Paradise Island. At seven in the morning.”
    “How energetic of him,” said Johnson’s voice regretfully. “Could you go?”
    “I have to be at the United Commonwealth later. I could manage nine holes,” I replied.
    “Will you?” he asked.
    My father has an impression of himself as a wit. It was unlikely that he had actually spoken to Wallace Brady of marriage.
    “Yes. I’ll meet him,” I said, and listened to Johnson’s voice, distantly congratulating me.
    Whatever it was, it had started.

----
Chapter 3
    « ^ »
    TWO DOLLARS to my mind is a high price for the half-moon toll bridge which connects Nassau to Paradise Island. Since I have no interest in the Casino and the golf course has only recently been restored, I seldom trouble to cross it. At that hour in the morning the gamblers, the tennis players, the water-skiers and sun-bathers were asleep, the helicopters and the yachts not yet in motion. Only a few other cars besides the Ford Anglia crossed the bridge with me: contractors for the development company, early morning golfers like myself. It is warm for golf by mid-morning in the Bahamas, and some people still have work to attend to.
    Wallace Brady awaited me at the golf course, which is on the right, or eastern end of the island. Although several luxury hotels and duplex villas have been created, and the excellent beach is fully equipped, some of Paradise Island is still largely jungle, and the straight avenues of pines dissolve into unmade roads edged with scrub, partly cleared here and there for new sites.
    Bought originally by Mr. Huntington Hartford, it bore the name Hog Island, I understand. The new packaging, I have no doubt, will match the new brand name chosen for it. Hog Island, to my mind, is the more honest appellation: both simple and etymologically sound.
    However, my views on such subjects are not generally the popular ones. I drew up outside the low, canopied entrance of the golf club, greeted Wallace Brady without undue fuss, and brought my clubs around the corner, where he had already hired an electric golf cart, a sorry sight. We entered, and he put his foot down and drove off.
    I should here mention, I think, that golf, a game played in Scotland largely by the unemployed, is regarded in America and those countries adjacent to her coasts as a highly esoteric pursuit, followed largely by the middle-aged and the elderly and requiring real wealth and leisure. The equipment and facilities, as Johnson had noted, are all accordingly priced for this market, in addition, naturally, to the obvious cost of maintaining in prime order many acres of grass which in Scotland would be watered, free, by the elements. For all