"Really!" he said and his voice sounded more British than any Elspeth had ever heard. "Really! I'm van Hooten. I'm here to get you to Reed Weston."
Elspeth broke out a smile of greeting but Mack motioned her away with his left hand. Keeping the newcomer covered, he peered quickly out into the hall, then shut the door and locked it. He studied their visitor with narrowed eyes, said, "Haven't you forgotten something?"
"Eh—what's that?" replied van Hooten. He laughed again. His height matched that of the photographer but his build was so much slighter that he seemed a far smaller man. He blinked and plucked a silk handkerchief from his sleeve to mop his brow.
"I'm waiting," said Mack ominously.
A spark of enlightenment lit van Hooten's eyes. "Oh, of course," he said. "The password—you quite frightened it out of me. Wilkinson, isn't it?"
"Aren't you sure?" said Mack. But he slipped the pistol into the waistband of his slacks and extended his right hand. "We've been waiting for you. You're prompt."
"Prompt—haw!" said van Hooten, eyeing the poetess with open interest. "As a matter of fact I'm bloody early. Just luck, my finding you in ahead of time. There's the deuce to pay just now. Raids, tipoffs, a regular crack-down."
"We'd better get started as soon as possible," said Mack. He offered van Hooten a cigarette, took one himself, accepted the flame of their visitor's expensive-looking gold lighter. "We had trouble in Baton Rouge this morning."
"Heard about it," said van Hooten. He hawed again. "Quite a trick, trapping the marshal in his scanties." He turned to Elspeth and said, "You may call me Everard, my dear."
"And you may call me Miss Marriner," said Elspeth, "a privilege I allow only my most intimate friends."
"Haw-haw!" said Everard. "Very amusing, my dear."
"If you two will stop clowning for a moment," said Mack rudely, "we have reason to believe Marshal Henry knows we're here."
"An open secret." Van Hooten dismissed the fact with a graceful flick of one hand. "Everyone in the know has been expecting you for absolutely days."
"He knows we're here in this suite," said Mack stubbornly. "I think it's time to move on."
"But that can't be!" said Everard, looking astonished. "I mean, it simply isn't possible that—"
He was interrupted by another knock on the door and Mack once again answered it, gun in hand. But it was only the boy with the check for the drinks, which he had forgotten on his first trip. Mack paid it, tipped him, waved him on his way.
"You know where Reed Weston is," he said. "Get us to him."
"It's not so awfully simple," said the visitor aggrievedly. Then, with a shrug, "But I rather fancy we'd better hop to it at that. Your duffle all packed and ready?"
They were ready in a matter of minutes. Before they left Mack said, "I presume they want us to provide transportation."
"But that's the whole idea!" exclaimed Everard, shocked. He patted his forehead delicately with his sleeve kerchief. "You have no idea what an appalling sensation you caused this morning when you lifted your little car—brrrrrppp—right into the air. The wires have been simply buzzing with it all day."
"Very well," said Mack, who was becoming even grumpier than usual under the impact of Everard's orchidaceous effluence. His lips tight, he led the way out of the hotel. As usual Elspeth found herself carrying her own suitcase. Mack had to have one hand free, and van Hooten made no effort to assist her.
They got out of the hotel and to the garage without incident of any kind, rather to Elspeth's surprise. She consoled herself, as they took off along the uneven streets in the faithful Pipit, with the fact that apparently she was not going to spend the night in a prison cell— but the luxury of the St. Louis, a bath, good food and a soft bed, lingered nostalgically.
SITTING between the two men she let her thoughts rove over the possibility of a bit of verse upon the subject. She would title it Creature Comforts and it would be a homely little poem with none of the abstract frills of free verse. It should rhyme, she thought, and consist of three sestets with an unexpected little rhyme break linking the middle of the lines.
The beat—it could be basically simple, even iambic. But carefully so—she had never been able to abide the basis of doggerel, not even in early school days. She began to consider the things she missed most when she didn't have them.
There was that dreadful thing of Kipling about "a woman is only a woman but a good cigar is a smoke."
She could get in a lick for her own sex, perhaps. Perhaps—the word perhaps—was important. She thought of ways and means.
"... a man, perhaps, but then, a sigh
Is all collapse of any of my loves
Has left me with—and much more dearly I
Prefer the myth that liquor dies with cloves
Or that my firm-fleshed skin will never dry
Nor my poor hands grow thin, force me to gloves ..."
It was complex and she had wandered away from the subject—but it was there as a third sestet. She rather liked the variety between the in-a-line rhyme and that of the final syllables. She built backward, toward the first sestet, was suddenly jolted out of her abstraction as Mack reached rudely across her to take a map Everard van Hooten had pulled from his pocket.
They were parked at the side of a wide palm-lined avenue on the outskirts of the city. Mack studied the map and went into his familiar frown as he traced their course.
"Looks awfully close to the Rio Grande," he commented. "I thought Weston was north of Texas."
"Oh, Mr. Weston keeps on the move —he has to," said Everard, buffing his nails on his flaring lapel. "Confidentially he's arranged a meeting with an envoy of the emperor. He's running himself ragged, poor man, in an effort to stop this silly war."
"Umm," said Mack. He studied the map some more, then handed it back across Elspeth to Everard. "Well, we'll give it a try."
"And are you actually going to take this delightful car of yours right into the air?" van Hooten asked in his absurd accent.
"When we're clear of the city and it gets darker," said Mack. "Otherwise we'll be days and probably get caught."
"This is a bit of a thrill," said van Hooten, shivering.
"Are you British, Everard?" Elspeth asked him.
He turned to regard her, his eyes wide with delight. "But of course not!" he exclaimed. "How divine of you to have thought so. I come from outside Boston, you know, where we value our British ancestry most highly. I couldn't be more pleased."
"And I couldn't be more sleepy," said Elspeth, yawning. The strain of the last week, the continued presence of danger all about them, had induced in her sudden and unbearable fatigue. "If you two supermen don't mind, I'd like to curl up in back for a nap." She yawned again.
"But of course," said Everard, opening the door to make way for her. Mack, not moving, said, "Go to it, Elly. You may need it."
She gave him one of her special Mack-looks and got into the back of the Pipit. Mack got it going again and she made herself reasonably comfortable—and of course at once ceased to be sleepy. She lay there, watching palms and occasional buildings flash by, and wondered what was going to happen next.
Strange world or no, Everard simply didn't ring true. Disregarding his blatant effeminacy, he seemed a most unlikely sort of agent to be operating either for the stalwart idealistic Reed Weston or the aristocratic Dr. Horelle.
His effeteness, she decided, could be traced back to the fact that he came from the Northeast, whose best blood had been drained in the gutters of civil war almost a century earlier. But his loquacity made him an unlikely agent, unless he were far cleverer than he seemed and used his talk as camouflage for silence.
Mack, she knew, was dissatisfied with him, too—but Mack was accepting him as the only presently available means of escape from their trap. And Everard wanted to take them almost to the border of Empire territory—along with the Pipit, an incredibly valuable instrument in a world that knew no airplanes.
IT WAS hot and not
even the speed of the Pipit raised a cooling breeze. Finally Elspeth did doze off, uncomfortably and to unpleasant dreams in which a huge black general with a disintegrator gun fired at an orchidaceous Mack with a purple bee tattooed behind his left ear, and she flung herself between them but not in time to save either of them.
Her dust and Mack's and that of the orchidaceous one were strangely mingled as they rose slowly in orange twilight—and the black-skinned general grew in height to match theirs and once more aimed his dreadful weapon at them. This time it meant—
She awoke and for a moment her dream was real—and then she realized that they were actually flying through the dusk with the sunset ahead and a trifle to their right. She shook herself and shivered, for it was blessedly cool after the New Orleans heat, and wondered, as do the half-awake, about her dream.
Shaking herself clear she fumbled for her handbag, found it and dug out her makeup kit. Her fingers found the light switch and she turned it on, gasped at what her nap had done to her already scrambled grooming.
"Turn off that light," said Mack. "We're too low."
She did so but not before she had again seen the purple bee. It was there —half hidden by the fringe of his haircut—behind Everard's left ear. She must have noted it subconsciously earlier and recalled it in her sleep. A silly sort of decoration for such an exquisite as Everard to indulge in—but she supposed it was one of the ridiculous fads the Everards of this or any world take delight in. She wondered why it should have alarmed her.
And then, of course, came the shaft of light. It was as lucid as if she had an X-ray handy with which she could read whatever secret papers, if any, Everard van Hooten carried upon his person. She knew what he was and why and where he was taking them.
They changed course slightly, letting the Sun move further to their right, and the tattoo vanished. Apparently it had to be seen from just the right angle, with the light coming from beneath and at a very flat angle. Ordinarily, even with the shortest of haircuts, it would not show at all.
The bee—the symbol of Napoleon the First's empire—and purple, the imperial color. She should, of course, have understood its implications at once—at least in conjunction with van Hooten's overemphasized New Englandism and his insistence upon taking them close to the border of Mexico.
But in her world there was no Napoleonic Mexican Empire and New England was not a drained-out, defeated area of little opportunity for young men—if Everard actually qualified as a man. It was entirely understandable from a psychological viewpoint. Unable to endure the conditions of living in his native land, unable to feel sympathy for the rude vigor of the Reed Weston revolt, he had been drawn to the Empire as by a lodestone. And what more natural than that the Empire should put him to work as a secret agent.
Elspeth knew it as clearly as if van Hooten had told her—but what to do about it was something else again. If Everard were armed, as he probably was, he might take advantage of any diversion she could make and force them to fly him to Mexico. Or he might have a disintegrator weapon himself. He would not use it on both of them, for they were the only two folk in this world who knew how to fly and, more important, to land the Pipit. But used against either one of them it would be tragic enough.
Elspeth sat there in the rear and fought her galloping nerves and wondered what to do. For once che could not rely on Mack. Everard was far too quick of understanding not to suspect at once any attempt at double talk which she might make in an effort to warn the photographer. And Mack's sensitivities were by no means so certain.
They flew on into the southwest in the gathering dusk, and Elspeth wondered what to do—for she was going to have to do something and do it both soon and effectively. She felt in her handbag for anything that could be made to serve as a weapon.
THERE was nothing. The pencil of rouge with which she tinted her lips was of too small a bore—especially since Everard had seen Mack's automatic. A hairpin would scarcely unlock this puzzle. She lifted the bag to cast it aside in its uselessness.
Of course—the bag itself. It was a rectangular affair, fashioned about a frame of heavy metal with sharp corners. British-made, there was nothing flimsy about its construction. If she could bring one of the corners down sharply on one of Everard's temples, it should at least stun him.
She eyed him, gripping the bag tightly, seeking just the right spot—she would have only one real chance and it would have to be good. Chills were rising through her body like vapor from a container of liquid oxygen.
Suddenly he flung an arm over the back of the seat and turned toward her. His face was alight with enthusiasm.
"Isn't flying simply too tremendous?" he asked her rhetorically.
"It can get very dull once you're accustomed to it," she replied, noting with some surprise that her voice was steady.
He uttered some further precious banalities to which she managed to muster replies, wondering when, if ever, he was going to turn around again. At last she saw a cluster of lights ahead of them and asked him what city they were approaching.
"Jove!" he exclaimed, turning to make identification. "That must be Dallas. See, Fort Worth lies just beyond. Dreadful sinkhole, that cowtown. It—"
She struck then, swiftly, hard, with a prayer in her heart that her aim be true. The corner of her bag caught him just above and in front of his left ear as he leaned slightly forward, the better to see out the window beside and ahead of him.
There were a surprisingly slight shock of contact and a dull thock as Elspeth's blow went home. She had a horrid moment of choking fear in which it seemed as if she had not struck hard enough to accomplish anything at all.
Her panic endured while Everard continued to lean forward, motionless. Then slowly his body began to slip. His knees buckled as he slumped off the seat and crumpled against the corner of the cabin, his head lolling forward drunkenly. A dark trickle began to move slowly down from his left temple.
"What the—" said Mack, looking around at Everard, then back at Elspeth, who was crouched forward, handbag raised to swing once more. His eyes popped as if he thought she was crazy.
"Put on the autocon," she told him. "We've got to tie Everard up and search him. He's an Imperialist spy."
"You're crazy if you—" Mack began. Then his eyes narrowed and he pushed the automatic control switch and turned on the cabin lights. The air was steady under the Pipit and she flew on toward Mexico. He dragged the unconscious Everard up onto the seat and, with Elspeth's aid, they got him into the back and laid him out.
"Quite a wallop you gave the poor devil," said the photographer unemotionally. "What makes you think he's a spy?"
She told him. Although she had to explain the significance of the bee, Mack did not laugh at her, somewhat to her surprise. Instead he regarded her gravely and uttered a clipped, "Thanks. I've been smelling something odd about Everard right along and I don't mean this perfume he's using."
"Mack!" Elspeth said with sudden horror. "You don't suppose I—"
"He's not dead," said Mack without sympathy. "Come on—before he comes to—let's see what he's carrying."
They found a flat little weapon, something like a pistol in outline but very different in detail if not in purpose, in a cleverly built-in holster where the watch pocket of his trousers should have been. Mack eyed it dubiously.
"Of course, it's not proof," he said. "Wonder what it does?"
"Don't try it here," said Elspeth, practical for once. "It might burn a hole in the Pipit— Mack, he's coming to!"
She gasped this last as a surprisingly steely hand suddenly gripped her by the wrist and she found herself staring into a pair of malevolent ice-blue eyes whose viciousness went beyond anything in her memory.
VII
WHY did you hit me?" Everard van Hooten asked softly. His voice was still low and well-modulated but effeminacy had been replaced by a steel-alloy tone.
"Because I caught sight of the bee behind your ear," said the poetess, struggling a little as she sought
to regain her freedom. "I knew you were directing us into an Imperialist trap."
The light blue eyes still bored into hers—for a long moment. The metallic fingers still gripped her wrist. She said, "Mack, he's hurting me. Make him let go."
"Cut it out," said Mack and the pistol in his hand lifted in preparation for a blow. Everard glanced at the photographer out of the corner of an eye, shrugged slightly, then released Elspeth with a smile of resignation.
"Very well," he said. "I'll be good. I shouldn't have lost control but the young lady made me so darned mad!"
"You're only mad at yourself for letting her knock you cold," said Mack unexpectedly. Elspeth felt a sudden glow of pride in her achievement. Then she saw the blood still trickling from the van Hooten temple and pride changed to inner sickness. She had always hated violence and physical force of any kind.
"I don't suppose there's any sense trying to dupe you two charming people," said Everard, mopping his temple with his sleeve kerchief and regarding the resultant stain with distaste.
"You did very well up to a point," said Elspeth, "but the answer from now on is a resounding no."
"Very well," Everard repeated in resignation. He was still an exquisite but no longer offensively so. "I'll put my cards on the table. My offer might be interesting."
"Probably, but it won't work," said Mack.
"Oh heavens, an inflexible character," sighed van Hooten. "But I'll make it for all that. Yes, I work for the Emperor. We got word that Weston was about to get something exceptional from the East some days ago. And when word of your escape from Baton Rouge reached New Orleans this morning we knew it was time to act."
"I should think you'd be on Weston's side in view of the situation between Columbia and the Empire," said Mack. Without taking his eyes off van Hooten he handed Elspeth his pistol, added, "Keep him covered every minute, even if he pretends to go to sleep, Elly. You can do it better from the rear seat."
House of Many Worlds Page 6