The World Shuffler (18 page)

He stepped out onto the balcony. The Mark IV was missing from the spot where he had left it propped against the wall. He groaned.

“Why didn’t I hide it? But no, I was so loaded with gadgets and confidence, I thought I’d be back in ten minutes with Daphne, and off we’d go. So now I’m stuck—even if I found her, there’d be no way out.” Lafayette left the room, closed the door behind him. The guard was just coming to, mumbling to himself. As Lafayette stepped over him, he caught the blurred words:

“... not my fault, Sarge, I mean, how could anybody get loose outa a room at the top of a tower with only one way down, except if they jumped? And there ain’t no remains in the courtyard down below, so my theory is the dame was never here in the first place ...”

“Huh?” O’Leary said. “That’s a good point. How could she have gotten away? Unless she took the Mark IV. But that’s impossible. It’s just an ordinary rug to anybody but me.”

“Hey.” The guard was sitting up, feeling of the back of his head. “I need a long furlough. First, I got these fainting spells, and now I hear voices ...”

“Nonsense,” O’Leary snapped. “You don’t hear a thing.”

“Oh. Well, that’s a relief.” The guard slumped back against the wall. “For a minute there I was worried.”

“There’s nothing I can do for Lady Andragorre now,” Lafayette told himself, keeping his thought subvocal now. “But—good night, I’ve been forgetting all about Swinehild, poor kid, all alone down there in the dark ...”He hurried down the stairs, headed for the dungeons.

The passage was dark, narrow, twisting and turning its way downward to keep within the narrow confines of the spire of rock from which it had been hollowed. Lafayette passed barred doors behind which forlorn-looking prisoners in grimy rags and lengthening beards slumped dejectedly on straw bunks. The meager light came from unshielded fifteen-watt bulbs set in sockets at intervals along the way. The doors in the final, deepest section of the subterranean installation were solid slabs secured by heavy hasps and massive, rusted locks.

“The solitary-confinement wing,” Lafayette murmured. “Close to paydirt now. Let’s see... it must have been about here ...” He placed himself in the approximate spot at which he had emerged from the cell in which he had been confined with Lorenzo. As he studied the wall to orient himself—it wouldn’t help to get the direction wrong again and wind up hanging in space, or back out in the courtyard—he heard stealthy footsteps approaching from around a curve above, down which he had just come. At once, he activated the flat-walker, waded forward into pitch darkness, switched back to natural density. “Swinehild?” he called. “Swinehild?” There was a soft clank and rasp of tumblers from behind him. A line of light appeared, widened. A male figure in a floppy hat with a broken, curling plume stood silhouetted there, holding a ring of keys in his hand.

“Lafayette!” an irritating voice hissed. “Are you here?”

“Lorenzo!” Lafayette said. “What are you doing here? I thought—”

“Well, so you did comeback!” Lorenzo said in a relieved tone. “It’s about time! This is the third time I’ve checked this pesthole! Let’s go! This luck can’t hold out forever!”

“I left you locked in; how did you get out?”

“Well—when I discovered you’d left without even saying good-bye, I knew there had to be a way—so I searched until I found the trapdoor in the ceiling. Since then I’ve had nothing but narrow escapes. Still, I suppose you were right about acting as if all this were real. At least it’s more fun playing hide-and-seek around the palace with the guards than it was trying to sleep in here with the mice. Now, let’s go—”

“Not without Lady A! She’s disappeared—”

“I’ve got her. She’s just outside the landing window, on your Mark IV. Nice little gadget, that. Lucky this is just a dream, or I’d never have believed it when you described it. Now, let’s get moving!”

“Swell,” Lafayette grumbled. “It was supposed to be tuned to my personal wavelength ...”

“Keep it quiet! The guards are playing pinochle at the head of the stairs.”

“Wait a minute!” Lafayette called urgently. “Give me those keys. I have another detail to attend to—”

“Are you kidding? I risk everything on the off-chance you came back to the cell for me—out of a misguided feeling that I couldn’t take your Mark IV and go off and leave you stranded—and you start babbling about errands you have to do!” He tossed the keys. “Do as you like; I’m on my way!”

Lafayette botched the catch. By the time he had retrieved the ring and jumped after Lorenzo, the latter was already disappearing around the tight curve of the passage.

“Hold the carpet for me!” O’Leary hissed. Hastily he examined the doors, picked one, tried keys. The door opened. From the darkness came a growl like a grizzly bear. O’Leary slammed it hurriedly, an instant before a heavy body struck the panel. He tried the next door—opened it a crack.

“Swinehild?” he called. This time he was rewarded by a quick intake of breath and a glad cry. There was a rustling near at hand, a faint whiff of garlic, and a warm, firm body hurled itself against O’Leary.

“Lafe—I figgered you’d went off without me!” Soft-skinned, hard-muscled arms encircled his neck. Eager lips found his.

“Mmmmhhhnnnmmm,” O’Leary tried to mumble, then discovered that the sensation of kissing Swinehild was not at all unpleasant— besides which, the poor girl’s feelings would be hurt if he spurned her friendly advance, he reminded himself. He gave his attention to the matter for the next thirty seconds ...

“But looky here, Lafe, we can’t get involved in no serious spooning now,” Swinehild said breathlessly, coming up for air. “Let’s blow outa this place pronto. It reminds me o’ home. Here, you hold the lunch. It’s rubbing a blister on my chest.”

He stuffed the greasy parcel in his side pocket, took her hand, led her on tiptoe along the upward-slanting passage. Suddenly, from ahead, there was a sharp outbreak of voices: a deep, rasping challenge, a sharp yelp which sounded like Lorenzo, a feminine scream.

“Come on!” Lafayette broke into a run, dashed on ahead. The sounds of scuffling, gaps, blows grew rapidly louder. He skidded around the final turn to see two large men grappling with his former cellmate, while a third held the Lady Andragorre in a secure grip with one arm around her slender waist. At that moment one of the men kicked Lorenzo’s feet from under him, threw him on his face, planted a foot on his back to hold him down. The man holding the girl saw O’Leary, goggled, opened his mouth—

Lafayette whipped the cloak around himself, took two quick steps forward, delivered a devastating punch to the solar plexus of the nearest guard, swung a hearty kick with his sharp-toed boot to the calf of the next. Dodging both victims’ wild swings, he sprang to the Lady Andragorre’s side and drove a knuckle blow to her captor’s left kidney, grabbed her hand as the man yelled and released his grip.

“Don’t be afraid! I’m on your side!” he hissed in her ear, and towed her quickly past the two whooping and cursing men. One made a grab at her, was rewarded with a clean chop across the side of the jaw that sent him to his knees with glazed eyes. Swinehild appeared, stared with wide-open eyes at Lady Andragorre, past O’Leary at something behind him.

“Lafe,” she breathed. “Where’d you get that hat?”

“Quick! Get Lady Andragorre onto the rug outside the window at the next landing down,” Lafayette barked, and thrust the girl forward.

“Gee, Lafe, I never knew you was a ventriloquist,” Swinehild blurted as he turned back to see Lorenzo, just coming to all fours, his plumed cap awry, one eye black, a smear of blood under his nose. Lafayette hauled the dazed man to his feet, sent him staggering after the women.

“I’ll hold these clowns off until you’re aboard,” he barked. “Make it fast!” He stepped forward to intercept one of the redcoats as he lunged after Lorenzo, tripped him, gave a side-handed chop to another, then whirled, raced down the passage after the others.

Swinehild’s face was visible in the window ahead as she tugged at the still-dazed Lorenzo’s hand.

“Who’re you?” he said blurrily. “Aspira Fondell, the Music Hall Queen? Bu’ I don’ love you. I love Bev—I mean Lady Andragorre—or do I mean Beverly?”

“Sure, she’s already aboard,” Swinehild gasped. “Come on!” She hauled backward, and Lorenzo disappeared through the window with a wild leap. Muffled cries came from the darkness as Lafayette reached the open sash. Six feet away, the Mark IV carpet sagged in the air, sinking under the weight of the three figures huddled on it.

“She’s overloaded.” Swinehild’s voice seemed thin and far away. “I guess we got one too many, Lafe—so—so I guess I won’t be seeing you no more. Good-bye—and thanks for everything ...” Before Lafayette’s horrified gaze, she slipped over the side and dropped into the darkness below, while the carpet, quickly righting itself, slid away into the night.

“Oh, no!” Lafayette prayed. “She won’t be killed—she’ll land on a balcony just below here!” He thrust his head out the window. In the deep gloom he barely made out a slim figure clinging to a straggly bush growing from the solid rock fifteen feet below.

“Swinehild! Hang on!” He threw a leg over the sill, scrambled quickly down the uneven rock face, reached the girl, caught her wrist, tugged her upward to a narrow foothold beside him.

“You little idiot!” he panted. “Why in the world did you do that?”

“Lafe ... you ... you come back for me,” she quavered, her pale face smiling wanly up at him.

“But ... but that means her Ladyship is all alone ...”

“Lorenzo’s with her, blast him,” Lafayette reassured her, aware suddenly of his precarious position, of the cold wind whipping at him out of the surrounding night.

“Lorenzo? Who’s he?”

“The clown in the floppy hat. He has some fantastic notion that the Lady Andragorre is his girl friend, some creature named Beverly. He’s probably bound for that love-nest he was on his way to when Krupkin’s men grabbed him.”

“Gee, Lafe—I’m getting kind of mixed up. Things have been happening too fast for me. I guess I wasn’t cut out for life in the big time.”

“Me too,” Lafayette said, looking up at the glassy wall above, then at the sheer drop below. He clutched his meager handholds tighter and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Which way do we go, Lafe?” Swinehild inquired. “Up or down?”

He tried a tentative move, slipped, grabbed, and clung, breathing shallowly so as not to disturb any boulders which might be delicately poised. The icy wind buffeted at him, whipped Swinehild’s skirt against his legs.

“What we need,” he said in a muffled voice, his face against the stone, “is a convenient door in the side of the mountain.”

“How about that one over there?” Swinehild suggested as a tremor went through the rock under O’Leary.

“Where?” He moved his head cautiously, saw the small oak-plank door with heavy wrought-iron strap hinges set in a niche in the solid-rock wall ten feet to his left.

“We’ll have to try,” he gulped. “It’s our only chance.” He undamped his aching fingers, edged a toe sideways, gained six inches. Five minutes of this painful progress gave him a grip on a tuft of weeds directly beside the door. He reached with infinite care, got his fingers on the latch.

“Hurry up, Lafe,” Swinehild said calmly from behind him. “I’m slipping.”

He tugged, lifted, pulled, twisted, pushed, rattled. The door was locked tight. He groaned.

“Why didn’t I wish for an open door while I was at it?”

“Try knocking,” Swinehild suggested in a strained voice.

Lafayette banged on the door with his fist, careless now of the pebbles dribbling away under his toe.

“No need to say good-bye again, I guess, Lafe,” Swinehild said in a small voice. “I already done that. But it was sure nice knowing ya. You were the first fella that ever treated me like a lady ...”

“Swinehild!” As her grip slipped, Lafayette lunged, caught her hand, clung. His own grip was crumbling—

There was a click and a creak from beside him; a draft of warm air flowed outward as the door swung in. A small, stocky figure stood there, hands on hips, frowning.

“Well, for Bloob’s sake, come in!” Pinchcraft snapped. A calloused hand grabbed Lafayette, hauled him to safety; a moment later Swinehild tumbled in after him.

“H-h-how did you happen to be here?” O’Leary gasped, leaning against the chipped stone wall of the torchlit passage.

“I came with a crew to do a repossession.” The Ajax tech chief bit the words off like hangnails.

“The idea was to sneak up and grab before he knew what hit him.”

“Sure glad you did, Cutie-pie,” Swinehild said.

“Don’t call me Cutie-pie, girl,” Pinchcraft barked. He took out a large bandanna and mopped his forehead, then blew his nose. “I told Gronsnart he was an idiot to keep on making deliveries on an arrears account. But no: too greedy for a quick profit, that’s the business office for you.”

“You’re taking over the Glass Tree?”

“This white brontosaur? Not until the last hope of payment has faded. I was after the last consignment of portable goods we were so naive as to deliver.”

“Well, I’m glad you came. Look, we have to grab Krupkin at once! He’s not what he seems! I mean, he is what he seems! He recognized me, you see—which means he’s actually ex-King Goruble and not his double, but he doesn’t know I know that, of course, so—”

“Calmly, sir, calmly!” Pinchcraft cut into the spate of words. “I was too late! The check-kiting fast-shuffler and his private army have flown the coop! He packed up bag and baggage and left here minutes before I arrived!”

Eleven

“Late again,” Lafayette groaned. He was sitting, head in hands, at a table in the glittering, deserted dining room of the glass palace. A few servants and guards had eyed the party uncertainly as they invaded the building, but the sudden absence of their master combined with the rugged appearance of the repossession squad had discouraged interference. The well-equipped kitchens had been deserted by the cooks, but Swinehild had quickly rustled up ham and eggs and coffee. Now Pinchcraft’s group sat around the table morosely, looking at the furniture and decor and mentally tallying up the probable loss on the job.