The Stranger - Max Frei [165]
“Ugh! That’s revolting. Hand over the matches.”
A few minutes later, Melifaro’s jubilant voice echoed through the room.
“Juffin’s going to fire us, Mr. Bad Dream! Boboota’s here, but he seems to be all right. He doesn’t even look like a sausage—he’s just sleeping.”
“He’s been here since yesterday. Evidently, turning into pâté is a fairly lengthy process. Oh, if it hadn’t been for my darned good luck, poor Juffin would have been so happy! It looks like it just wasn’t meant to be.”
“What’s going on here? Are you here, Sir Melifaro?” It was the voice of Lieutenant Shixola, a policeman, and our good friend.
“Over here. Keep it down, boys. Your boss, it seems, is taking a nap.”
“What?! Our boss?”
Shixola quickened his pace, and tripped over the corpse of the mad chef at a rapid clip. I managed to catch him at the very moment his thoroughbred nose was an inch from the floor. His colleague, following close behind, miraculously avoided the same fate, and several more policemen reached for their weapons in alarm. Melifaro guffawed.
“Good day, Sir Max,” Shixola mumbled, freeing himself from my embrace. “Lucky for me you have excellent reflexes. What did I trip over?”
“Over the body of a state criminal—a poisoner, a cannibal, and the abductor of General Boboota. Mr. Itullo tried so hard to make your life easier and more pleasant! Truly, gentlemen, Sir Melifaro and I are terribly sorry. We are to blame. Here is your boss, healthy and all in one piece.”
“Not ‘we’—just you, Max!” Melifaro hurried to rid himself of the undeserved laurels. “I just came here for dinner. So, gentlemen, if you have come to punch the living daylights out of the one who rescued your boss, Sir Max is your man. I ask you to observe the proper protocol!”
The policemen looked at Melifaro as though he were a slow-witted sick child. It seemed to them that saying such things about a person wearing the Mantle of Death, in his presence, no less, was not courage, but suicide. I made a horrible grimace and showed Melifaro my fist. One shouldn’t let down one’s defenses in front of strangers, all the same. Otherwise, how could you keep them quaking in fear?
“I won’t disturb your work, gentlemen,” I said, bowing to Melifaro. “Carry on.”
“And you?” Melifaro asked indignantly.
“What more is there for me to do here? I’ll go cheer up Juffin. By the time you get there, he will already have had time to kill me for the good news. Then, you’ll see, you’ll be relieved. I’m saving your skin, friend. It’s nothing to me—I’m immortal.”
The poor policemen listened to me, mouths agape.
As I was going out the door, Melifaro’s voice reached me. “Were you serious about that immortality business, Max?” I sighed and resorted to Silent Speech, which I had been avoiding all day, Who knows who I am? I told you.
I set out for the House by the Bridge. I really couldn’t wait to repent before my boss. And I hadn’t seen Melamori since the morning.
Since I was driving the amobiler, I was in Sir Juffin Hully’s office, in less than ten minutes.
“I never expected you to be so prompt, Max. Finding Boboota a dozen seconds after sunset! That’s a record even for our office—cracking a case less than a minute after it was officially opened. We have something to celebrate. Let’s go to the Glutton. And you can stop peering around in hopes of seeing Lady Melamori. She has been home for two hours already, by my estimation. I let her off, poor thing: first her relatives, then that foolish call from you at sunrise. What brought that on? A surge of tender emotion? Come on, let’s go.”
“Did Melifaro manage to report everything to you while I was on my way here?” I was a bit hurt. “And here I thought my tongue would drop off before I finished telling my tale.”
“What do I need with someone’s report? I’m always with you, in a manner of speaking. And not because I so desperately want to be.”
“Always!?” I was flabbergasted. “That’s news to me!”
“Oh, Max. Don’t exaggerate. I would go off my rocker if I had