The Srafen holdings, as householders in this neighborhood were wont to express it, consisted of a respectable three-story house with several outbuildings set up upon a knoll several dozen lam-heights from the road. Indeed, in this region of Mathas, we were practically taking another brief countryside holiday. Beyond the ornate wrought-iron fencing, a high, dense grove of skottii and macrostibs lay wrapped around the place, very nearly concealing the house from casual view, while neatly cultivated notoc bordered the flagging of the drive, and, where no taller growth shut out the light, decorative plots of yellow and orange algaesand lent cheerful color to the somber scarlet of the tall cactus.
Mav assisted me from the cab, paid the driver, and we stepped up onto the verandah, where a male servant bade us enter and took our outer garments. “The master will see you directly,” he reported without particular enthusiasm, although a subtle sneer in his fur seemed directed toward either us or his employer—I was uncertain which. In any case, sneer and servant disappeared immediately, so I dismissed the question from my mind and tried to remember what I had been told of Srafen’s spendthrift husband.
In this I was to be interrupted, although no one’s husband or master greeted us. Instead, an expensive and voluminous concatenation of crepes and silks and satins in the very latest fashion and the chicest shades of mourning blue swept suddenly around and down a curving flight of marble stairs, which were the centerpiece of the entry hall, and announced itself to be Liimevi Myssmo Law, the grieving widow of our late Professor, and wife of that same Law whom we thought we were about to interview.
“You really must forgive dear Lawsy,” she gushed, conducting us into a well-appointed parlor off the entryway. Except for narrow paths for walking between the furniture, the colored sand in this room had been set out in occult patterns, and then fixed with resins to preserve the esoteric arrangement. The unmistakable gluey smell was fresh, indicating that this refurbishment had taken place only recently. “He’s simply too, too broken up at our loss to be much use to anyone. Perhaps I may be of some assistance?”
This last utterance was accompanied by a curling simper in her pelt, which made the prospect of striking her (an impulse whose intense ferocity took me quite by surprise) most tempting. For Mav’s professional sake, however, as well as for the sake of my own dignity, I decided to attempt noble forbearance.
At least until some further provocation might offer itself.
“Indeed, you may, Madame Law, for we had also wished to ask of you certain questions concerning the murder of your surhusband. May I introduce my associate, Missur Mymysiir Offe Woom, and I see that your butler has placed my card upon your table.”
She passed a hand over Mav’s card, withdrew it as if it were some small poisonous animal, then made to pick it up again. “Do please be seated, and I’ll ring for kood. You are, then, Agot Edmoot Mav of Their Majesties’ Bucketeers? How very peculiar: I am certain I have heard your name before, sir.”
“Then I am flattered.” He took a cushion close beside her, while I felt well content with something considerably more distant. “I was a student of Srafen’s, as well as rher great admirer. I understand that you, too, were a student of rhers.”
The faintest shiver of—what, embarrassment?—crept across her highly decorated carapace before it was drowned savagely in what seemed to be a habitually honeyed expression. “Why, so I was, sir, and a little later on, came to assist poor, dear Srafen in rher laboratory, cataloging every sort of disagreeable and nasty crawly thing in vile, odiferous liquids—and all of them with such long, confusing names. It was there, at the University, we both met Lawsy, who offered to help out with the air pumps and other mechanical contraptions, and a year after that, we were married.”
At last she rang for kood, which gratified me, for it promised to dispel the odor of the setting resin rising in almost visible miasma from the carpet. There were upward of half a hundred pointed questions I should like to have followed her last statement with, chiefly why, in the name of everything dry and holy, had Srafen ever even spoken to this babbling cretin. But this was Mav’s investigation, so with reluctance, I kept my peace.
He said, “I see, madame. Then, all in all, for how long were you acquainted with Professor Srafen?”
“Why, what a peculiar question to ask of a widow.” She toyed with the bows and ruffles of her mourning weeds. “Now let me think…I suppose, from the first lecture of rhers I attended, some eight or nine years in all. Why ever do you ask such a thing?” Again the revolting curl swept through her fur.
To which Mav rippled polite reassurance. I attempted to compose myself in a similar attitude, despite the strongest of temptations to the contrary. “I apologize, dear lady, if my questioning disturbs you in any way. May I call you Myssmo? Perhaps it won’t seem quite so cold and formal then. Very well, my purpose is to attempt to discover whatever person or persons wished to have Professor Srafen out of the way. As that was to be the subject of my next question, would you kindly consider that I have already asked it?”
Errgh! How could he be so…civil with this foul creature? She paused for what seemed to me an unduly long time—in the light of my developing opinion that she did not have that many thoughts to sort through. Perhaps she had simply forgotten Mav’s question.
“Why, for the life of me, I cannot think of anyone at all who might wish to injure the poor funny old dear. Srafen was so kindly, absent-minded, and affectionately thought of by, well, just everyone. I am quite mystified, to tell the truth.”
Yet not precisely wracked with grief, I thought, and, glancing around at her opulent surroundings, I could well understand why. Everywhere, the elegance of what must be presumed to have been Srafen’s simple tastes was pasted over with a veneer of cheap—but expensive—artificial gaudiness. From the ceiling hung a cunning furry representation of the Martyred Trine, and everywhere, a thousand little balls of fringe and velvet ropes.
How I positively itched to put a few “little surry questions” of my own!
A surmale domestic, rustling in stiff, apparently newly purchased livery, brought the kood in an elaborate service.
“You know,” persisted Mav, “of no person, no enemy, who might have desired ill for Srafen?” He asked her, also, whether she might object if he prepared his pipe—a courtesy he had never shown to me. A miniature flurry of calculated indignation and concern skimmed across the surface of her pelt.
“Why, Mav, if I may presume to call you that, I am surprised! Do you not find the unnatural effluvium of such a habit disturbing to your psychic aura? Extrasensory perception is such a delicate, fragile—”
“I humbly beg your pardon, madame,” he replied, and actually put his pipe away! Perhaps the thousandfold effluvia from the carpet had affected his delicate and fragile sensibilities. “It is my understanding that you were actually present the evening of the murder, is that not so?”
He was answered by a dramatic shudder. “Why, yes. It was such a terrible thing, wasn’t it? The awful sight, the noise…”
Which might have sounded precisely to her, I thought, like the ringing of a merchant’s register. I wondered if anyone intended ever to light the kood when it occurred to me that, if someone did, the room positively swimming in fumes, we might witness yet another explosion, this time from its interior.
“Indeed,” replied Mav. “And did you not see the religious demonstrators in the street that night? Do you not think it possible that they might hold some deadly animosity toward your surhusband?”
“Oh, dear! I’d quite forgotten them. Such ungentlelamly riffraff they were, at that! If only poor, dear Srafen had listened to me. Do you really think that they—”
“That is what Missur Mymy and I are endeavoring to ascertain. What do you mean, if only Srafen had listened to you?” Was that an irritated quivering I saw about his nostrils, or merely my increasingly unreliable vision?
She tilted her carapace forward a trifle in what she must have imagined was a dramatically co
nspiratorial gesture. “Well, you see, I’d had rher trilune cast just the day before—by sheerest of coincidence, you understand—and you simply won’t believe the ghastly warning revealed in the equations! Why, it cautioned rher plainly to avoid certain business dealings for the rest of the week and that a conflict was in the offing that might lead to personal inconvenience! Isn’t that just too uncanny? And that very evening—”
“Pardon me, did you convey this…information to Srafen?”
“Why certainly I did, and do you know what rhe told me?”
There was a long pause. “I can well imagine; Srafen’s views on that sort of …thing were quite familiar to me. Let me ask you—”
“You know, I’ve just had the most perfectly marvelous idea! Why don’t we all ask the estimable Dr. Ensda, a very great lam and my own personal spiritual adviser—I am sure that you have heard of him—to cast a trilune for your investigation? We would need to know the moment it began, of course; I’m sure that he could tell us straightaway whether you will meet with success, and…”—here, her carapace tilted even farther, her voice becoming so low that I could scarcely hear it—“and perhaps he might even ferret out the culprit! Well, what do you think of that?”
I concede that it is remotely possible that Mav was taken speechless out of admiration for Myssmo’s suggestion. On the other hand, he may have simply been deep in thought, considering it. On the third hand, like myself, he may have been busy framing the reply that it truly merited. At length, he spoke again: “My dear lady, that is certainly an idea. And I will put it, allowing credit where it is due, to the good doctor myself, for this afternoon I intend to call upon him, directly we are finished here.
“As to the precise moment my investigation began, you yourself were there at the instant Srafen died—I’ll not be satisfied until rher murderer lies flattened to a finger-width between a pair of granite blocks!”
At this pronouncement, the tilt of Myssmo’s carapace threatened to become an avalanche as she began to swoon.
“Your pardon, madame,” Mav interjected quickly. “I see I have upset you. Perhaps it would be better now if we were to take our leave. May I use your telephone to call a cab?”
Somehow, she recovered. “But you have not yet enjoyed your kood, good Investigator. Why not allow me to light the wick now, and I will have your telephoning done. Will that be agreeable?”
Once again, I wished that I had been consulted. She set a match to the wick and then traipsed off toward the hall, mincing between the garish and barbaric patterns in the carpet. The door swung partly shut behind her, and Mav placed a finger before a nostril to silence me (as if, all afternoon, it had really been necessary!), caution written large upon his pelt. Then, signing me to follow, he tip-fingered across the room in the direction Myssmo had gone. The door, as I have said, was still ajar, and we both peeked into the hall, where Myssmo herself held the telephone in her hand.
It was impossible, of course, to make out what she was saying, for the hall was large and properly carpeted. Moreover, she was not precisely shouting into the instrument. She held the speaking orifice close upon her nostril, her pelt aroused in what I believe was sincere anxiety, and glanced wildly about the place as if pursued by some gigantic predator.
She momentarily returned the telephone to its little table, attempting to compose herself, then picked it up again, addressing someone on the line in relatively normal tones. When she set the instrument once more upon its stand, both Mav and I hastily returned to our original positions, my companion remaining standing, which I took as a cue to collect my bag.
“Your transportation’s on its way, good Bucketeers,” she warbled cheerily as she entered the room again. “I really wish you would be seated until it arrives; perhaps you would be interested to hear about that most amazing incident that happened at a séance I attended just the other evening.”
Mav’s pelt was courteously arranged. “I do beg your pardon, Myssmo, and thank you sincerely for the hospitality you have shown us. But I must have some words with my associate, and we are both in need of fresh air”—here, he rippled his pelt at me on a side Myssmo could not see, a talent I must someday attempt to cultivate for myself—“having been cooped up in our offices all this morning.” He indicated the gathering gloom outside her windows. “I am afraid our time for fresh air is growing short, for there are, as you see, definite indications of rain upon the horizon.”
To the polite prevarication on Mav’s part concerning our morning’s activities, I manifested sober affirmation, desiring nothing more dearly at the moment than to quit this polluted chamber. Mav thanked her once again for the kood and conversation and suggested, once our belongings had been returned to us, that we might see our own way out.
In all, this final separation took rather longer than I might have wished, it being necessary to excuse ourselves from several invitations to various séances, entrail-readings, and the casting of our own trilunes. By the time we managed to reach the porch, our cab could be seen beginning its ascent around the long, circular drive.
For the moment, we were alone.
“Mymy,” Mav inquired, a cast of puzzlement in his fur, “may I ask why you did not assist me more in interrogating Myssmo? Merciful Pah, I could certainly have used your—”
I had taken sufficient breath for an appropriately indignant reply, when—
BAMM! There was the sound of a pistol shot to our left. The cabman’s watu shied and reared, threatening to overturn the vehicle. Mav swiftly drew his reciprocator. I felt about my person for bullet holes. Discovering none, I extended the search into my bag for my little pistol and, feeling quite foolish and melodramatic, followed Mav around the corner of the building.
There, toward the back along a gravel pathway, lay a line of watu stalls not dissimilar to those in which Mav quartered his own riding animals, but evincing relatively recent disuse. Before the nearest of them, a tallish, thin, aristocratic fellow incongruously attired in soiled work clothing was heaping sand in desperate haste into some complicated wheeled mechanism from which there issued a considerable volume of black smoke.
Mav holstered his pistol. “Mymy, do be good enough to go and ask the cab to wait for us. Here’s a nickel crown, which ought to hold him.”
Indeed, and it would hold, me, too, had it not been for the clouds gathering overhead. I followed his instructions, however, hoping that the fellow would not blame us for the explosion, and returned to my companion’s side in time to hear introductions being made.
“Oh, I say, so you are Captain Mav!” The card in the stranger’s hand now bore a greasy fingerprint. “Srafen spoke quite often and affectionately of you, sir. I am Tobymme Toodhagomm Law. Splendid making your acquaintance at last, old lam!” He extended a blackened hand, took it back and wiped it with an equally unsightly cloth, and offered it again.
“How do you do, sir,” said Mav, “and this is my associate, Missur Mymy. Mymy, this is Srafen’s husband. Is that some sort of new steam carriage there that you are working on?”
I’d seen a thousand of Law’s sort while growing up, usually where the idle rich gathered to pop about in little chariots pursuing a leather ball with mallets. It was one of my principal motivations for desiring a useful occupation.
“Not precisely,” young Law replied, “although it is what I began with. This is an invention of mine, an idea I had one afternoon while shooting shrimp out in the Neth upon a friend’s estate. You see, he had this splendid new Continental reciprocating shotgun—about three-bore if I recall aright—and it occurred to me that one might alter an engine to the same principle that operates the action of such a gun, employing the same combustible substance both as fuel and the expansion medium that turns the rotor, instead of burning something to heat water to produce steam.”
For the second time that day, I believe I witnessed Mav rendered quite speechless. “A capital idea, Law, a capital idea!” He drew his weapon again, displaying it to the young inventor—although I not
iced that he stopped short of offering to let the fellow handle it. “But tell me, has it not occurred to you that modifying a conventional three-lobed rotary steam engine is less efficient than following the natural design of the gun?”
Law manifested perplexity.
Mav scraped away the sand that had been thrown into the motor. “Look here, instead of this trochoidal rotor, imagine, if you will, a sort of captive bullet, unable to escape the barrel and attached to a cranking shaft that would drive the wheels. A reciprocating engine, now wouldn’t that be something? Whatever would one use for fuel, I wonder.”
Law pointed toward a clump of abandoned apparatus leaning against the shed. “I started off with gunpowder, right enough. See, there are the hoppers and metering devices that proved both hopelessly complex and rather dangerous. Fellows at the Club—you ought to join, don’t you know?—talked me out of it, eventually. Soon afterward, I hit upon ordinary inhaling fluid, such as you’re using in your pipe, there.”
I thought I’d recognized the noisome scent, and tapped several walking fingers upon the pathway. “It seems to me a rather unhealthy sort of invention. Can you imagine a cityful of these devices filling everybody’s air with smoke and unburned vapors? I believe that I prefer Vyssu’s steam carriage!”
Mav’s rear eye brightened. “Oh, there you are, Mymy! Where have you been all this time?” He made considerable show of walking around Law’s mechanical contrivance and poking into the discarded powder mechanism. “Ingenious! I have been asking Law, here, a number of questions about his—what do you call it, sir?”
“An internal conflagration engine,” he replied, fuzzy with pride.
“And a splendid turn of phrase it is, at that! I will follow its development with great interest, and it pains me that we must now depart. I shall give due consideration to joining your Inventors’ Club. Our cabman will be desirous of his due, and it appears that we are in for it, weatherwise. I shall return, old fellow, rely upon it. I’m absolutely dying to see your engine running!”
Their Majesties' Bucketeers Page 13