The Sure Thing (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  From somewhere, muted music spilled upon and swirled in the air—in the delicately scented air, I realized—the thin sweet sound of reeds, faint thumm-thumm as though of fingertips tapping and brushing stretched skin, rhythmic and almost hesitant ling-lingling-ling from strummed strings and perhaps those little cymbals slender dancers wear on the fingers, with behind it all and beneath it all two other melodic sounds difficult to name, one that must have been voices humming, and the other a liquid bubbling that might have been water rippling over rounded stones but that I preferred to believe was warm honey gurgling in old jewel-encrusted water pipes....

  It was about then, when my imagination reached out far enough to start fondling jewel-encrusted water pipes, that I realized for a second or two, or possibly longer than a second or two, that I had quite literally been thousands of miles from here in my mind; and I wondered what had happened to the girls here, while I'd been there.

  Certainly they were not anywhere handy, and for a moment I experienced a sort of sickening vacuum in my stomach and queasy emptiness in my head as my fired-up imagination, not yet all the way back to cool, made me wonder if the Sheikh's—and now my—enemies, black of robe and eye and soul, had piped opium or even worse in through the air-conditioning system, from delicately scented opium pipes or even worse, and had restolen my recaptured harem while I stood here entranced by hypnotic gasses and the splendid thumm-thumm and lingaling and bubbleubble.

  But then, even before I located them visibly, I heard the—welcome, sweet—sounds of giddiness, or childlike cooings and gleeful cheepings, or female oozings and oohings and aahings of unrestrained exuberance, either that, or the whole gang of huge birds was laying feather-covered omelettes.

  It was, therefore, not difficult to find them.

  They had not been rekidnapped.

  But at first I could not comprehend what the hell they were doing.

  Why, they were—all six of the beauties were—flopping about like kids in the Fun House on a water bed larger than entire bedrooms found in most duplexes. It struck me, upon first view as, really, equal in area to some alfalfa fields I'd seen, and it had to be a water bed because no other kind of bed cooperates so enthusiastically with whatever you do to it, or upon it, or with it, or sometimes merely near it, as all who have ever poked one with a tentative finger must surely agree.

  I walked forward, looked down upon a sight even the Lords of Heaven must have gazed upon with some appreciation, if not a good deal more, and said, “Beautiful! Hey-boy!"

  It wasn't really necessary for me to think up marvelous and poetic phrases, since these gals didn't pay any attention to anything I said anyway.

  “Hot damn!” I said.

  “Go, go!” I said, waving my hands at them.

  For once, they listened. To my hands, I mean. And, of course, they heard it all wrong.

  They stopped. All that wonderful movement ceased.

  “No, you dummies,” I said sharply, “go! Come on, go!” And I waved my hands at them again.

  Didn't do any good. They just lay there.

  Well, even that—a harem laying there—was better than almost anything else I could think of. And for once I had all the attention of all six parts of it. So I decided to give all of it or them a little speech, which I had been going over in my mind, on the off-chance that we might one day all be together again, at a banquet or something.

  “Girls,” I said, “the most important thing I forgot to tell you before now is that I, your benefactor, your savior—make that the guy who saved you—your rescuer and all ... am Shell Scott."

  “Shell Scott, I said,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, maybe it doesn't mean a whole lot to you now—but remember that name, OK?"

  “Ah, you dumb broads.... Well, even if you can't understand all of this consciously, I am comforted by the knowledge that everything I say will enter into your subconscious minds, which never forget, and ... forget it. All I want to say is, even if we haven't hit it off the way I might once have dreamed we might hit it off, I thank the horny Sheikh for his part in bringing all of us together for this wonderful time we're having. I even thank Audrey and Gippy, and Cynara Lane, and Mrs. Gernbutts. And, certainly, I thank Devin Morraigne, for were it not that he and his doodlebug ... went forth to find ... a sunken ship...."

  Something was happening.

  “What did I do?” I said. “What did I say? What—"

  One of the beauties had bounced vigorously off the bed, and, the way water beds are, instantly each of the five remaining gals seemed to be waving all the others at me—and now the lone lovely stood before me against the background of the waving five, and there was no doubt this one, at least, was gazing at me with unconcealed interest, if not lust, at last.

  But my hopes had been dashed too many times before.

  “What was it?” I asked her, controlling my excitement. “Couldn't have been ‘sunken ship,’ no magic in that one. I'll bet it was ‘doodlebug,’ right? Doodle-bug!"

  “Mahhhrraayyenn,” she sang, in a way songs have not been sung before. It was a song of beauty, sweet and husky and syrupy, but not in any sticky or gooey way. It was a beautiful experience.

  “Great,” I said. “That's very good. I knew there had to be something to turn you gals on. Try it one more time and I'll have it. Maaahrrraaah ... how'd it go? Honey, you don't know how exciting this is to me—don't think I didn't read The Arabian Nights under the covers as a kid, and even plenty since—and I'll never forget that. ‘Open O Cockamamie’ or whatever it ... Sesame, yeah. All you need is the right word, and ‘Open Sesa’—what? What was that?"

  “Daaayyhhavvannn...."

  Oh, it was beautiful, really....

  All of a sudden I thought I was getting it. Sure. The key, the magic word to open the cave where all the jewels and secret treasures were hidden, was:

  "Devin Morraigne?" I howled. “Is that it?"

  I smiled at her, and she did more than merely return my smile, she beamed all over, and if you don't think a gal can do that—particularly one in a ghazikh and a shoup-shoup and apparently nothing else at all—then you can go stand in a corner at the foot of the class.

  But I had not yet realized the full significance of my discovery, and, foolishly, as it turned out, I waggled my hands—it was almost a habit by now—and cried, “DEVIN MORRAIGNE. Open, o Devin Morraigne—"

  “Daaayyhhavvannn Mahhrraayyenn!” she sang melodically the whole song from beginning to end this time.

  And, from behind her on the water bed, “Daayyhhavvannn—” from one of them, and then another, and “Mahhrraayyennn!” from a couple more, and movement, bouncings, and wigglings and numerous artful beautifications as the five of these moved sinuously toward here, while the lovely closest to me touched my cheeks with cool hands and then let them slide down my arms, and at last gripped my own hands in her fingers and stepped back, pulling me with her.

  Or, at least, trying to pull me with her.

  Because—while I didn't really mind too much being pulled with her, or finding myself, as suddenly I was finding myself, surrounded and sort of set upon by six of the most gorgeously turned-out and turned-on tomatoes upon the planet—I like to have at least a faint idea of what's going on under such circumstances.

  Too, way back in a well-hidden corner of my mind, lurked various comments of Sheikh Faisuli, and a tiny but horrible image of a huge one called Harim Babullah, plus wee heads rolling around like microscopic BB's.

  But, most of all, I was starting to realize the sort of half-full significance of my discovery.

  “Hey,” I said, “cool it, hold it—no, don't do that—ladies, I think somebody's made a little—no, a big—mistake ... here...."

  But by the time I got all this out, which took a while, I had been pulled and pushed, or tricked, onto the water bed by those six lovelinesses.

  I'm absolutely not certain how it happened. But however it happened, suddenly I was there, and bouncing, and not exactly fighting to get aw
ay from there, or even from bouncing, since there were too many new experiences and memorable sensations and harplike strummings of multi-plucked stimuli for one brain simply to absorb, much less to have any brains left over for directing a battle against a whole bunch of determined girls.

  Naturally, since I had no intention of deliberately deceiving these splendidnesses, I did my best to explain to them their error, whatever it was, as best I understood it. But no matter what I said, they listened to me in the same old way. And when I tried to explain by waving my hands significantly, well, I don't suppose I could have done anything more perfectly designed to make them assume I must be enjoying myself.

  However, to be candid, I should confess that—after trying to push them all away without severely injuring them, or even injuring them a little bit—I sort of let myself become grudgingly reconciled to the idea that there wasn't any way I could get out of this ghastly predicament, that somehow I had wound up in one of the most magnificently sensuous rooms ever created, at the approximate center of the biggest water bed in the world, being attacked by six of the most aphrodisiacal beauties ever to grace the finest harem out of Kardizazan, and I'd just have to make the best of it.

  Thus it was that, half a minute or so later, I heard the ringing of a metallic and melodically crashing voice—not a girl's voice, needless to say—delivering a short snappy phrase that I could not understand but had a sinking hunch I had already interpreted with dismaying accuracy.

  Before I even saw him, I knew: The Sheikh, the absolute ruler, the head-lopper, of Kardizazan, was aware that I had saved his harem for him.

  I was able to glimpse him pretty quick, because a bunch of girls got out of the way of my eyesight pretty quick, and there he was, gazing, without a whole lot of benevolence, down upon me—me, bouncing alone, in the middle of the huge water bed.

  There had been other times in my life when I experienced some difficulty in picking out the just-right remark to make, in order to carry off a sticky situation with a certain air, with aplomb, with grace. There had even been times, like this one, when I couldn't do it.

  Maybe I could have thought of something, given a minute or two, had it not been that with my first glimpse of Sheikh Faisuli I got a glimpse of more than just Sheikh Faisuli.

  There was something with him.

  Behind him, towering over him—indeed, also sort of spreading out at both sides of him—was a something that at first I assumed must be King Kong with all his skin peeled off. Then I realized it was a very large human being of sorts. Talk about muscles, they looked as if they were on the outside, like those gruesome pictures in medical textbooks. Man, I told myself, I couldn't beat up that guy with an axe.

  Well, nobody had to tell me who he was. You don't have to hit me on the head.

  A very speedy and very odd little ceremony then was performed before my fascinated eyes. Probably nobody else in the entire world had witnessed a ceremony quite like it before, but I would have been pleased to let any of them take my place for this one.

  Sheikh Faisuli stood where he had been all the time, all the time at least since I'd glimpsed him, and his six beloved and cherished wives stood in a—well, it sure wasn't a straight line—before him.

  I already knew, for Faisuli himself had told me, that in his country all a man need do in order to divorce a wife was repeat three times the phrase, “I divorce you."

  Well, that is what the old Sheikh said.

  Eighteen times.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Nothing much happened.

  Oh, Sheikh Faisuli turned and impaled me with his black and fiercely glowing eyes; the girls continued to stand where they were, unmoving; Harim Babullah, merely breathing shallowly, flexed his muscles in a horrifying way.

  But, so what?

  It was nothing. For by this time, of course, I knew who had conned me, and how, and why. Certainly there had been enough clues, more than enough.

  I slid off the water bed, walked over next to the Sheikh. Next to Babullah, too, since he was not far from the Sheikh, certainly not far enough. And it was a queer sensation for me, looking way up there at a guy.

  But this was my moment, and I meant to milk it.

  So I stretched up as tall as I could get, then, grinning very widely, bent forward so my face was close to Faisuli's, and said, “You blew it, Sheikh."

  I saw the flicker, or dance, in his dark eyes and I believed—that is, had a moment to believe—he understood, or at least was beginning to understand.

  Unfortunately, Harim Babullah did not understand. On the contrary, he made a terrible mistake in his interpretation of my toothy grin, and my leaning close to the absolute ruler of Kardizazan, particularly when this had been immediately preceded by what I must have appeared to be doing on the water bed.

  Harim started lifting his left arm—the Sheikh was on his right; besides, I was closer to his left arm, which, I suppose settled it for Babullah—with a fist at the end of it like the biggest prize turnip ever seen at the County Fair, sort of purplish-white and ugly—hell, I don't remember the color, but it was sure ugly—gazing at me from coffee-saucer-sized eyes the color of grounds, impassively, no strain, quietly contemplating a little job to be done.

  What he was doing, obviously, was raising his arm and the turnip up over my head, upon which plainly his intention was then to crash it down. He wasn't moving like lightning, either. More like a ton of turtle. Just kind of leisurely. As if he had all kinds of time. Which, judging by what he accomplished, I suppose he did.

  “Hey, Harim,” I said tentatively. “I mean, Mr. Babullah—OK if I call you Harim? Look, pal, you're all screwed-up."

  He was really moving slowly. In the first place, to get his arm up higher than my head wasn't such a big thing; it seemed to me he shouldn't have had to raise it more than a couple of inches or so. Actually, what was happening kind of fascinated me, as if it was happening to someone else. Unfortunately, it wasn't.

  But I kept talking to him. Yeah, brilliant, just like those great conversations I'd carried on with the babes. Maybe he fascinated me like snakes do to little animals, just before they kill them and eat them. I was aware with part of my consciousness that Sheikh Faisuli was scowling in concentration, obviously puzzling over my remark to him.

  And, actually, I did realize that Harim Babullah probably couldn't speak English, at least not fluently. I just didn't concentrate on that realization and its ramifications enough to become fully aware that, right here in Sheikh Faisuli, whose thoughts were elsewhere, was a handy interpreter, and what I needed very much, oh so very much, was a handy interpreter.

  In fairness to me, let me also say that I was giving a whole lot of my attention to that simply unbelievable arm and fist, the entire mass of which was now quite high enough, if I was any judge.

  “Look, baby,” I said, “I mean Harim, I just got through taking care of a guy half your size, so you'd better think twice unless you want something terrible to happ—"

  Something terrible happened, all right. Because that is what Harim intended. And he didn't even think once about it. I saw the arm and fist coming down, sure I did. So naturally I put my own arm up to break the blow. So instead of my arm breaking the blow, vice versa. At least, that's what it felt like, for about one two-hundredth of a second, which I'd say is the length of time it took for his arm to move from the point where it began breaking my arm to the point where it began caving in my head.

  * * * *

  “Now, what is this blew?” Sheikh Faisuli asked me. “I blew what how?"

  “Sheikh, will you give me another minute?” I was trying to stretch again, up as tall as I could get, and it seemed to me I couldn't stretch up as much as before. “It's tough enough understanding you sometimes when I'm completely conscious."

  “Harim understands now, and he regrets."

  “Beautiful."

  “I have spoken to him, severely. Be assured, he will not strike you further."

  “I'm sure glad to hear
that. If he struck me any further, I'd be out past the city limits. Well, in answer to your question, you blew it"—I sighed, went on—"when you divorced your six wives in English."

  “Ah...."

  “Ah will have to do, I guess. Take it from me, these babes understand nothin', unless it's unintelligible. By the way, do you suppose one of these days you might thank me for saving them?"

  “Yes, of course, I am filled with thankfulnesses."

  “Yeah, you're so full of them they're falling out of you in bunches."

  “Blew it. I commence to understand, this is the same as goofed?"

  “Precisely so,” I said, fondling my head.

  He started to snap his thumb and middle finger, a very American gesture synonymous with “Damn,” or “Aha!” or even “Shucks.” Then he paused, looked fiercely at me, and said questioningly, “Then you have pierced my secret?"

  “From beginning to end, it is pierced."

  Then he snapped his fingers. It was a Middle-Eastern “Shucks” if I'd ever seen one. Which, come to think of it, I hadn't.

  “Astray in my designs, where did I go and how?"

  I waited a beat, to make sure I had that one, then said, “Well, you went astray all over the place, when I look back, Sheikh. Very often you started to say the succulents or the everloving lotus blossoms, then quickly changed it to my whatever, my wives, or my beloved loving cups. Also, the last time you mentioned your harem to me, when speaking of being in your palace in Kardizazan, there the possessor of jewels and moneys and such, you also referred quite naturally, unconsciously I suppose, to your forty-seven wives. Soon after we met, the first time I asked you how many wives you had, you automatically said forty-seven then, too, which undoubtedly is the number of your wives at home—I mean, after deducting old Haherain, and Mushlik ... did I get those names right?"