Universe Twister - Keith Laumer [135]
"Hey! A guy! He just popped out o' the air, like!" a man yelled. "Take him, Renfrew!" Lafayette made a desperate leap, ducked the haymaker, felt hard hands grab his ankles, saw other hands seize the girl as he went down, banging his head against the baseboard. Half-dazed, he was dragged to his feet and flung against the wall.
"Well, look who's here," the grinning face hovering before him said in tones of pleased surprise as hands slapped his pockets, relieving him of the gadgets pressed on him by Pinchcraft. "You get around, bub. But you should of thought twice before you tried this one, which his Nibs ain't going to like it much, you in here with her Ladyship, and her in the altogether!"
"She's not altogether in the altogether," O'Leary mumbled, attempting to focus his eyes. "She's wearing her rosebuds."
"Hey, look!" another of the new arrivals called. "Lord Chauncy's over here back o' the divan! Boy oh boy, will you look at the size o' the mouse on his jaw!"
"Add assaulting his Lordship to the charges on this joker," the sergeant in charge said. "Kid, you should of stayed where you was. You didn't know when you was well off."
Two men were holding Lafayette's arms. The third had placed the unconscious girl on the bed.
"O.K., Mel, don't stand back to admire your work," the NCO growled. "Let's hustle this joker back to the cell block before somebody finds out he's gone and starts criticizing the guard force."
"Can't I . . . can't I just say a word to her?" O'Leary appealed as his captors hustled him past the bed.
"Well—what the heck, kid, I guess you paid for the privilege. Make it fast."
"Daphne," Lafayette said urgently as her eyelids quivered open. "Daphne! Are you all right?"
For a moment, the girl looked dazedly around. Her eyes fell on Lafayette.
"Lancelot?" she whispered. "Lancelot . . . dearest . . ."
"OK, let's go," the NCO growled. Lafayette stared despairingly back as they escorted him from the room.
Nine
Lafayette sat in pitch darkness, slumped against a damp stone wall, shivering. The tomblike silence was broken only by the soft rustlings of mice frisking in the moldy straw and the rasp of heavy breathing from the far corner of the dank chamber. His fellow prisoner had not wakened when he was thrown into the cell, nor in the gloomy hours since. The aroma of Moonlight Rose still lingered in O'Leary's nostrils, in spite of the goaty stench of the dungeon. The memory of those soft, warm contours he had held briefly in his arms sent renewed pangs through him every time he let his thoughts rove back over the events since his arrival at the Glass Tree.
"I really handled it brilliantly," he muttered. "I had every break—even stumbled right into her room, first try—and I still muffed it. I've done everything wrong since the second I found myself perched on the windmill. I've let down everybody, from Swinehild to Rodolpho to Pinchcraft, not to mention Daph—I mean Lady Andragorre." He got to his feet, took the four paces his exploration of the dark chamber had indicated were possible before bumping a wall, paced back.
"There's got to be something I can do!" he hissed to himself. "Maybe . . ." He closed his eyes—an action which made very little difference under the circumstances—and concentrated his psychic energies.
"I'm back in Artesia," he muttered. "I've just stepped outside for a breath of air in the midst of a costume ball—that's why I'm wearing this fancy outfit Sprawnroyal gave me—and in a second or two I'll open my eyes and go back inside, and . . ."
His words trailed off. With the stench of the cell in his nostrils, it was impossible to convince himself that he was strolling in a garden where nothing more odiferous than