The World Shuffler (15 page)

“Nothing here,” the man said and let the skirt drop. Lafayette let out a breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding. “Sure, I forgot the cloak,” he chided himself.

“That being the case,” the male voice continued, “what’s my rush?”

“Art related to an octopus on thy father’s side?” the Daphne-like voice was inquiring with a suppressed giggle. “Aroint thee, milord, thou’ll break the zipper.”

“Why, you ...” Lafayette muttered, and froze as conversation again cut off abruptly.

“Chauncy—there’s someone here!” the feminine voice said. “I ... I sense it!”

“Yes, well, as I was saying, I have my sheet-and-towel inventory to check over, so I really can’t linger—”

“Pooh, Chauncy, at this hour? Surely you’re not afraid?”

“Me? Afraid?” Chauncy’s voice broke on the word. “Of course not, it’s just that I’ve always loved inventories, and this is my chance to steal a march by working on it all night, so—”

“Chauncy—we were going to take a moonlight walk, remember? Just you and me ...”

“Yes, well—”

“Just wait while I slip into something more comfortable. Now, don’t go ‘way ...”

“Hey,” Lafayette murmured weakly.

“The acoustics in this room are terrible,”

Chauncy said nervously. “I would have sworn someone whispered ‘hey’ just then.”

‘‘ Silly boy,” the other voice replied. There was a soft rustling sound, followed by a sharp intake of masculine breath. The feminine feet reappeared; they paused before the closet; slim, ringed fingers appeared, to pull off one shoe, then the other. The feet went to tiptoe, and a voluminously skirted garment collapsed on the floor. A moment later, a filmy nothing floated down beside the dress.

“Really, milady,” Chauncy’s voice squeaked, “his Highness ... but to perdition with his Highness!” The booted feet rushed across the floor, trod on a small, bare foot. There was a sharp yelp, followed by the second sharp
smack!
of the evening.

“You big, clumsy idiot!” the female voice wailed. “I’d rather stay cooped up here forever than put up with—”

“Oh, so that was your scheme, you slick little minx!” Chauncy cried. “You inveigled me here with promise of goodies to come—planning all the while to dupe me into abetting your escape! Well, this is one time the old skin game won’t work, milady! I’m collecting right now—”

Lafayette emerged from under the bed in a rush. As he leaped to his feet, the owner of the boots—a tall, lean, courtier type in the pre-middle-aged group—spun, grabbing for his sword hilt, staring wildly over, past, and through O’Leary. Behind Chauncy, Daphne—or Lady Andragorre—bare-shouldered in a petticoat, stood on one shapely leg, massaging the toes of the other foot. Lafayette reached out, lifted the man’s chin to the optimum angle, and delivered a sizzling right hook which sent the fellow staggering back to bounce off the wall and pitch forward on his face.

“Chauncy!” the lady whispered, watching his trajectory. “What—how—why—?”

“I’ll teach that lecher to sneak around ladies’ bedrooms helping them with their buttons,” Lafayette said, advancing on the half-clad girl. “And as for you, I’m ashamed of you, leading that gigolo on!”

“I hear your voice ... oh, beloved—I can hear you—but I can’t see you! Where are you? You’re not ... you’re not a ghost?”

“Far from it!” Lafayette pulled the cloak back from his face. “I’m flesh and blood, all right, and all I have to say about this spectacle is—”

The lady stared for a moment into O’Leary’s face; then her eyes turned up. With a sigh, she crumpled onto the old rose rug.

“Daphne!” Lafayette blurted. “Wake up! I forgive you! But we have to get out of here in a hurry!” As O’Leary bent over her, there was a thunderous pounding at the door.

“There’s a man in there!” an irate voice yelled from outside. “All right, men—break it down!”

“Hold your horses, Sarge—I got a key—”

“You heard me!” There was a thunderous crash that shook the door in its frame, the sound of heavy bodies rebounding.

“So, OK, we use the key.” Lafayette slipped his arms under the unconscious girl and lifted her, staggered to the heavy hangings against the wall, and slid behind them as the lock clicked, the latch turned, the door banged wide. Three large men in cerise coats with lace at wrist and chin, tight cream-colored pants, and drawn swords plunged into the room and skidded to a halt.

They stared, then cautiously prowled the room.

“Hey! The place is empty,” a man said.

“There’s ain’t nobody here,” a second added.

“Yeah, but we heard voices, remember?”

“So we made a mistake.”

“Either that, or ...”

“Or we’re all going crackers.”

“Or else the joint is haunted.”

“Well, I got to be getting back to my pinochle game,” a private said, backing toward the door.

“Stand fast, you,” the NCOIC barked. “I’ll say when we get back to the pinochle game!”

“Yeah? You want to wait around and shake hands with the Headless Hostler?”

“And like you said, it’s time we was getting back to the pinochle game,” the sergeant finished sternly. “Let’s go.”

Three sets of footsteps retreated cautiously toward the door. As they reached it, Lafayette, standing behind the curtain inhaling the perfume of the girl in his arms, heard a preliminary crackle from his sword hilt.

“Oh, no,” he breathed.

“Butterfly to Flapjack,”
a testy voice sounded from near his left elbow.
“What’s going on, Flapjack? You haven’t reported for over five minutes now!”

“Over there,” a tense voice said. “Behind them drapes.”

“Flapjack? Report!”

“Shut up, you blabbermouth!” Lafayette hissed in the general direction of his left hip, and sidestepped as the curtains were rudely torn aside.

“Chee!” the man who stood there said, staring wide-eyed at Lafayette’s burden.

“Coo,” said the comrade peering over his shoulder, and ran a thick pink tongue along his lower lip like one recovering a crumb of icing.

“Holy Moses,” said the third. “She’s ... she’s floating in midair, like!”

“She—she got little teeny rosebuds embroidered on her undies,” the first man said. “Think o’ that, fellers!”

“Walking or floating, them are the neatest curves a guy ever seen,” his comrade stated.

“Hey—she’s floating toward the balcony doors, boys!” a man blurted as O’Leary edged sideways. “Block the way!”

As the three palace guards spread out, O’Leary tried a play around left end, gained two yards, delivered a sharp kick to a kneecap as the owner reached a tentative hand toward milady’s dangling arm. He dodged aside as the fellow yelled and clutched at the injured member, hopping on one foot. For the moment, the way to the door was clear; Lafayette lunged, felt the cloak tug at his back as the hopper trod on the hem; before he could halt his plunge, it was ripped from his back.

“Hey! A guy! He just popped out o’ the air, like!” a man yelled. “Take him, Renfrew!” Lafayette made a desperate leap, ducked the haymaker, felt hard hands grab his ankles, saw other hands seize the girl as he went down, banging his head against the baseboard. Half-dazed, he was dragged to his feet and flung against the wall.

“Well, look who’s here,” the grinning face hovering before him said in tones of pleased surprise as hands slapped his pockets, relieving him of the gadgets pressed on him by Pinchcraft. “You get around, bub. But you should of thought twice before you tried this one, which his Nibs ain’t going to like it much, you in here with her Ladyship, and her in the altogether!”

“She’s not altogether in the altogether,” O’Leary mumbled, attempting to focus his eyes. “She’s wearing her rosebuds.”

“Hey, look!” another of the new arrivals called. “Lord Chauncy’s over here back o’ the divan! Boy oh boy, will you look at the size o’ the mouse on his jaw!”

“Add assaulting his Lordship to the charges on this joker,” the sergeant in charge said. “Kid, you should of stayed where you was. You didn’t know when you was well off.”

Two men were holding Lafayette’s arms. The third had placed the unconscious girl on the bed.

“O.K., Mel, don’t stand back to admire your work,” the N.C.O. growled. “Let’s hustle this joker back to the cell block before somebody finds out he’s gone and starts criticizing the guard force.”

“Can’t I ... can’t I just say a word to her?” O’Leary appealed as his captors hustled him past the bed.

“Well—what the heck, kid, I guess you paid for the privilege. Make it fast.”

“Daphne,” Lafayette said urgently as her eyelids quivered, opened. “Daphne! Are you all right?”

For a moment, the girl looked dazedly around. Her eyes fell on Lafayette.

“Lancelot?” she whispered. “Lancelot ... dearest ...”

“OK, let’s go,” the NCO growled. Lafayette stared despairingly back as they escorted him from the room.

Nine

Lafayette sat in pitch darkness, slumped against a damp stone wall, shivering. The tomblike silence was broken only by the soft rustlings of mice frisking in the moldy straw and the rasp of heavy breathing from the far corner of the dank chamber. His fellow prisoner had not wakened when he was thrown into the cell, nor in the gloomy hours since. The aroma of Moonlight Rose still lingered in O’Leary’s nostrils, in spite of the goaty stench of the dungeon. The memory of those soft, warm contours he had held briefly in his arms sent renewed pangs through him every time he let his thoughts rove back over the events since his arrival at the Glass Tree.

“I really handled it brilliantly,” he muttered. “I had every break—even stumbled right into her room, first try—and I still muffed it. I’ve done everything wrong since the second I found myself perched on the windmill. I’ve let down everybody, from Swinehild to Rodolpho to Pinchcraft, not to mention Daph—I mean Lady Andragorre.” He got to his feet, took the four paces his exploration of the dark chamber had indicated were possible before bumping a wall, paced back.

“There’s got to be something I can do!” he hissed to himself. “Maybe ...” He closed his eyes—an action which made very little difference under the circumstances—and concentrated his psychic energies.

“I’m back in Artesia,” he muttered. “I’ve just stepped outside for a breath of air in the midst of a costume ball—that’s why I’m wearing this fancy outfit Sprawnroyal gave me—and in a second or two I’ll open my eyes and go back inside, and ...”

His words trailed off. With the stench of the cell in his nostrils, it was impossible to convince himself that he was strolling in a garden where nothing more odiferous than a gardenia was to be found.

“Well, then—I’m inspecting the slums,” he amended “—except that there aren’t any slums in Artesia,” he recalled. “But how about Colby Corners? We had a swell little slum back there, created and maintained by as determined a crew of slum dwellers as ever put coal in a bathtub.” He squinted harder, marshaling his psychic forces. “I’m in a Federal Aid to Undesirables project,” he assured himself, “doing research for a book on how long it takes the average family of ne’er-do-wells to convert a clean, new, modern welfare-supplied apartment into the kind of homey chaos they’re used to ...”

“Say, would you mind hallucinating a little more quietly?” a querulous voice with an edge like a gnawed fingernail inquired from the far corner of the room. “I’m trying to catch a few winks.”

“Oh, so you’re alive after all,” Lafayette replied.

“I certainly admire your ability to doss down in comfort in the midst of this mare’s nest.”

“What do you suggest?” came the snappish reply. “That I huddle here with every nerve a-tingle to monitor each nuance of total boredom and discomfort?”

“How do we get out?” Lafayette said tersely. “That’s the question we ought to be thinking about.”

“You’re good at questions, how are you at answers?” The voice, O’Leary thought, was a nerve-abrading combination of petulant arrogance and whining self-pity. He suppressed the impulse to snap back.

“I’ve tried the door,” he said in tones of forced optimism. “It’s a single slab of cast iron, as far as I can determine, which seems to limit the possibilities in that direction.”

“You’re not going to let a little thing like a cast-iron door slow you down, surely? From your tone of voice, I assumed you’d just twist it off its hinges and hit someone over the head with it.”

“... which means we’ll have to look for some other mode of egress,” O’Leary finished, gritting his teeth.

“Splendid. You work at that. As for me, I’m catching up on my sleep. I’ve had a pretty strenuous forty-eight hours—”

“Oh, have you? Well, it can’t begin to compare with my last forty-eight hours. I started off on top of a windmill, worked my way through a homicidal giant and a set of pirates, two jail cells, an execution, a fall down an elevator shaft, a trial for espionage, and a trip on a flying carpet, to say nothing of the present contretemps.”

“Uuuum-ha!” Lafayette’s cellmate yawned. “Lucky you. As for myself, I’ve been busy: I’ve parlayed with a mad prince, dickered with a duke, carried out a daring rescue, double-crossed a sorcerer, and been beaten, kicked, hit on the head, slugged, and thrown in a dungeon.”

“I see. And what are you doing about it?”

“Nothing. You see, it’s actually all a dream. After a while I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone, and I can get back to my regular routine.”

“Oh, I see. The solitude has driven you off your hinge. Rather ironic, actually,” he added with a hollow chuckle. “You, imagining I’m a figment of your nightmare. I remember when I had similar ideas about a lot of things that turned out to be painfully real.”

“So if you’ll stop chattering, so I can go back to sleep, I’ll be grateful,” the abrasive voice remarked.

“Listen to me, Sleeping Beauty,” O’Leary said sharply. “This is real—as real as anything that ever happened to you. Maybe hardship has driven you out of whatever wits you may once have had, but try to grasp the concept: you’re in a cell—a real, live, three-dee cell, complete with mice. And unless you want to stay here until you rot—or the hangman comes for you—you’d better stir your stumps!”

“Go ‘way. I haven’t finished my nap.”