Doctor Who_ The Romans - Donald Cotton [10]
My immediate impression was that my neighbour might possibly be a percussion player, anxious to accompany my impromptu recital; and glad as always to accept professional assistance whenever offered, I strode rapidly to the communicating door, which I flung open with a few well-chosen words of welcome, which now escape me. But no matter; for it was soon obvious that for once I was under a misapprehension.
Crouched in the centre of the room, beating on the floor with his simian fists, his already unappealing features contorted further by an expression of malign fury which temporarily obscured his eyes in rolls of fat, or some such substance, was a squat figure in the uniform of a Legionary, second class; which on the selfsame instant sprang headlong through the space where the door had been until I opened it; and carried by its own inept impetus across the width of my own accommodation, it presently came to rest in a crumpled heap at the foot of the opposite wall, where it lay, breathing deeply, and gloomily inspecting a severe laceration of the left hand caused by a knife grasped in the right.
‘Damn!’ it complained loudly; but in so slurred a voice that I had no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that the man was not only on a murderous errand, but at least partially intoxicated! And since it seemed to me that it could only have been my ‘prentice performance on the lyre which had roused him to this paranoid pitch, a moment’s further thought inclined me to the belief that this creature must certainly be that selfsame Ascaris about whose homicidal musical criticism I had already been apprised.
It was therefore but the work of a further moment for me to entangle his flailing limbs in a blanket which I snatched, toreador-like from my bed; and then to rain a series of stinging blows about his bestial body.
(I was once, as is well known, a highly-rated practitioner of pugilism and other martial arts.)
Ignoring his agonised cries of ‘Gerroff!’, I now proceeded to entwine the strings of my instrument about his cloven fists, from one of which I then had no difficulty in removing the knife; and victory was mine!
I hauled him to his feet, and was about to question him closely as to his murderous activities, when the door behind me opened once more, this time to admit my young friend Vicki; who misinterpreting as always the essence of the situation, screamed so loudly as to startle me.
Whereupon I fear I jumped, and inadvertently pushed my assailant out through the window, before I could obtain the information from him which I required.
It seems likely that he then escaped into the night, for there was no sign of his mangled remains when I remembered to look this morning.
Breakfast was a gloomy meal; for I am, I must say, becoming irritated by Vicki’s constant juvenile and hysterical intrusions into my masterly grasp of affairs, and next time I think I may well leave her at home, or at least in the TARDIS.
Conversation was, therefore, sporadic; and not much enlivened by the centurion’s naive, and, it seemed to me, nervous attempts to question me: ‘Had I really slept all that well?’ ‘Was I absolutely positive that my privacy had not been invaded during the night by some kill-crazed assassin or other?’ And much more to the same effect.
I answered all these questions with the dismissive, absent-minded smile I keep for such occasions, and turned to my devilled kidneys and kedgeree in the confident knowledge that I was right, as ever, not to trust the man.
He knows more than he admits: and in spite of his over-bland protestations of friendship, I now believe him to be in league with the villain!
Never mind: today we shall be in Rome – where I am confident I shall find an opponent more worthy of my steel: namely the Emperor Nero!
DOCUMENT VIII
Third Letter from Legionary (Second Class) Ascaris
Dear Mum,