Their Majesties' Bucketeers (16 page)

At this, Myssmo began to wail.

“Oh be still, you silly female, you’re interrupting! The problem was that there’s a limit to how much she could pay. Her surhusband, the real algae-winner (here he took a long, contemptuous look at Law) of this
happy
family, had placed her on a strict allowance. Little wonder, when you see what she’s done to this place since the old surry kicked off! Srafen, I discovered, intended donating as much of rher considerable fortune as possible to the pursuit of rher philosophical flights of fancy. What a waste! Imagine giving everything away just to help a lot of thin-pelts generate even longer words and less-comprehensible theories!”

Well, I reflected, here was something which I had heard before, a point of some agreement between this mountebank, Niitood the reporter, and the Keeper of Fundamental Truth. It seemed a wonder to me that there continued to be any progress at all, it had so many willing enemies.

“In any event,” continued Ensda, “I approached ‘Lawsie’ here, for he seemed to have some personal uses to which money could be put—”

Here, Vyssu surprised me by laughing briefly.

“—it would have done no good at all to discuss anything linear and rational with their wife, here. After some negotiation, we struck a bargain and made a plan. With the help of one of Srafen’s solicitors, concerning whom I was privy to a number of embarrassing facts, we began to manipulate the accounts a trifle. Srafen would never know, as what strain we placed upon rher resources would never become apparent until after rhe had passed away—when there would be no free lunch forthcoming for natural philosophers!”

Abruptly, Law sank to the floor and placed a hand over each eye. Myssmo, who was hearing this for the first time, just as we were, appeared strangely unmoved. I kept an eye on Mav, as well, whose thoughtful expression waxed gloomier with each successive word from the lunologist.

Ensda whirled upon them both in turn. “We saw to it that our gullible friend here had some remuneration which might stem any minimal curiosity it might occur to her to exercise. You may see, around this place, the uses to which she has applied it—disgusting!

“And you—get up from there, you soft-shelled weakling! Face what’s coming to you like a lamviin! You suffered your share of the spoils quite cheerfully enough when they were the only apparent consequences!

“So there you have it all, my dear Inquirer, a complete confession—to embezzlement! It’s readily verifiable; among other bonafides, I shall supply the name of Srafen’s perfidious lawyer. But I see you are confused—why am I doing this? Because, you see, our periodic raids upon rher wealth were only possible as long as rhe was alive; upon rher death, the trust—that delightfully manipulable trust—would be dissolved, all remaining wealth devolve upon the Museum and University, and we would cease deriving any benefit. You have me now for a thief, but never for a murderer—I stood to gain far too much from Srafen’s continued health!”

Mav propped himself up a little, leaning more than I liked upon his wounded limb. “I understand entirely, sir,” he said very quietly. “And you, Law, fearing my investigation into Srafen’s death would disclose this flummery, decided to take violent means against me and my friend.” He took the inhaler from his nostril with a discouraged move of his hand and laid it upon a side table.

There was not a sound from Srafen’s husband, only an abject cast of resignation in his fur. The set of Ensda’s pelt was one of positive contempt. “And thus the fool directed your attention straight toward us!”

Mav fell strangely silent, an expression I could not interpret covering his carapace. He looked toward the window; it was black as pitch by now outside, and, judging by that expression, possibly within his soul, as well. He was not far from the wall and so reached over and pulled back the drape. “I see the rain has stopped, Mymy. Do be good enough to telephone the Precinct. They’ll be wanting Dr. Ensda here, and Law. I believe, for what little good it shall do her, that we may leave mention of Myssmo out of things.” His languor affrighted me sorely.

Vyssu rose in my place and left the room, for I could not leave the detective’s side, so poignantly did he fail to conceal his bitter disappointment. I feared far more for his life at this moment than I had at any time earlier in the evening, for people must have some reason to go on living, and there was not the slightest trace of that remaining in my friend.

“Mav,” I offered, “we have brought two criminals to book, and there is still a murderer to—”

“I know, my dearest friend,” he murmured gently, “I have not forgotten. I think now that the only remaining course is to see whether or not, when I have recovered from this wound, I can get myself murdered, as well.”

XIV: A Desperate Enterprise

Mav’s
despondency proved dreadfully contagious. He had spent much precious time and effort and hopes dearly held, nearly expended his own life as well, pursuing matters we now had learned were wholly unconnected (at least in any save the most indirect of senses) with Professor Srafen’s murder.

That my detective friend should manifest discouragement did not surprise me. My own attitude, I realized, was one of unrelieved weariness, and I even began doubting, so intertangled and complex did the most ordinary and innocent affairs of lamn appear, whether Mav’s shining dream of scientifically untwining the criminal ones was practicable at all. Perhaps such tasks had best be left to Churchlamn and to these new alienists who were beginning to enjoy a certain notoriety.

Ensda turned out, uncharacteristically, as good as his word, for his story was confirmed upon the next morning—I had this through one of the most singular telephonic communications I have ever received—with the apprehension of the criminal solicitor (a phrase Niitood later was to claim is the soul of redundancy) and his subsequent confession. It is positively astounding what the possibility of accusation for a capital offense—and of the Blocks—will do to elicit cooperation from the commonplace thief.

Somehow, in the next few days, Vyssu’s establishment in the Kiiden was to become our unofficial headquarters, due partly, I suppose, to Mav’s indisposition. He would tolerate no servants in his own lodgings; Fatpa and one or two others such as owed their livelihood to Vyssu anxiously oversaw the Inquirer’s return to health. This was something of an annoyance to me, since it was I who had begun his course of treatment and who, in every professionally ethical regard, ought to have seen to its continuance and completion.

Nonetheless, it was upon no medical matter that I was so curtly summoned the next morning to the detective’s side. He lay upon a broad satin-covered cushion, the slim wand of his silver inhaling tube tilted rakishly from one nostril, and a wick of some robust and lamly kood filling his female friend’s front parlor (which now served as his office and infirmary) with a heartening fragrance.

I set my bag upon the carpet. “Good morning, Mav. I see that you have done well by yourself, as usual. A word about that pipe of yours, however, which will slow your healing by at least—”

He crinkled and looked up at me. “Ah, Mymy, good morning to you, also. If I am not to be allowed my pipe, dear paracauterist, I shall perforce have to turn instead to juicing.” Here, he mimicked quite accurately that sudden rigor which current induces in the body. “What effect might
that
have on my health? I am given to understand that you may now deliver an informed opinion on the subject.”

“Why, of all the…oh, very well, then, make a finish of what Ensda has begun! But before you do, kindly inform me why that strange unpalatable creature Fatpa telephoned my rooms this morning, asking for assistance on your behalf. Have you some idea, after all, of continuing these efforts?” With this unthoughtful utterance, I felt instantly ashamed, for I could understand and sympathize with Mav’s vain labors, if anybody could, and with the final resignation of his words last evening.

Mav, however, remained quite cheerful. “Quite so, my dear, quite so, although you have been summoned here somewhat less to render assistance to me than for your own continued well-being. Tell me, Mymy, have you still that little equalizer we took from Law?”

“Why, yes, I believe that I have. It is to be hoped that Law will have little use for it in future. Why ever do you ask—would you like me to return it to him?”

“On the contrary.” He laughed. “Do you believe that you can make proficient use of it after just one brief lesson?” He extended a hand, which I took as a request on his part to examine the weapon in question. I rummaged about in my bag, found the gun, and gave it to him, though I hesitated to answer immediately. Much like my earlier exchange with Fatpa, this conversation was making less and less sense to me the longer it lasted.

“I am unsure how to judge proficiency at such things, Mav. I think that I can do as well or better than I did upon the morning of our picnic.”

He slammed the little pistol shut. “Splendid. You must have a care, now, and keep this where you can reach it with celerity, for over the next few days I shall have to place your life—and my own, I hasten to add—upon the gambling table, risking all against nothing to ensnare an evil-doer.” He gave me back the gun and fell silent for a moment. Then: “Had I not anticipated the self-righteous vigor of your reaction, I would tender the suggestion that you take a room here in this place, where I could be more assured of your safety.”

“My dear fellow,” I intoned icily, “I trust your anticipations will be satisfied, for the suggestion fills me with that full measure of revulsion you expected! As to my safety, sir, I have been taking care of myself for nearly—”

“Now, Mymy,” he said with a sudden gentleness, “there is a genuine concern here. You had no way of knowing, when you arrived, that I am about to publicly announce that I have the identity of our killer. I fear—indeed, I trust—that this announcement will compel him to attempt to strike again before—”

“What are you saying? Why did you not tell me of this immediately instead of—” I sat down heavily upon the cushion beside him, perplexed and in no small degree annoyed that I had wasted so much sympathy.

“I did not say that I
know
who murdered Srafen, Mymy, merely that I intend
announcing
that I do. It is to be hoped, by means of this deception and the killer’s subsequent actions, that I will discover his identity and be enabled thus to fulfill my public pledge. Do you follow me?”

My mind was in a whirl. “
That
is what you spoke of yesternight! I took it for a sort of suicidal resignation!”

He laughed, his fur acrinkle to the very roots. “No, not at all, my very dear, not at all! I’m sorry indeed to have alarmed you so. Perhaps the tone I used was affected by my wounds and fatigue. This sally had occurred to me—in fact, I have some notes upon it, made last year sometime—but, when it seemed that Ensda was our lam, I set it aside. Now it is the only recourse I have left, an act of calculated desperation, for all my other traces seem to have evaporated along with the dampness from yesterday’s rain.”

I inhaled the kood-smoke drifting through the room and braced myself up again. “I see. And how is it that you intend to make this announcement of yours?”

He reached out to pat one of my hands. “I have already done so, to Niitood, his colleagues and competitors, through a written deposition, copies of which good Fatpa is distributing in newspaper offices throughout the city at this very moment. Would you care to see the original?”

He handed me a scrap of paper that bore, not the Department’s sigil, but, in neatly handwritten lines, his own name and the address of this place in which we sat conversing:

To Parties Interested in the Matter

of the Late Professor
Srafen
Rotdu Rizmou:

Following extensive inquiries into the circumstances surrounding the recent brutal murder of the Curator of the Imperial Museum of Natural Philosophy, I have determined to name the responsible party at a gathering to be conducted in the offices of Battalion Chief Waad Hifk
Tis
three days hence. Those persons whose involvement in the matter is legitimate—and otherwise—may assure themselves that Their Majesties’ justice shall be vindicated to the utter limit which Their law provides.

                                          Agot Edmoot
Mav
, Extraordinary Inquirer

                                          Their Majesties’ Bucketeers

                                          Fadyedsu Street, The Kiiden

It had certainly by no means escaped my notice that Mav, for the first time in our acquaintance, had placed a hand upon my person in some manner other than is necessary, for example, in assisting one of the weaker sexes into a carriage or in escorting someone across a dangerous thoroughfare. Indeed, the difficulty I encountered finishing that conversation with him comprehensibly was but the first of many equally dizzying events that seemed to tread over our carapaces during the next several dozen hours with such ferociousness and rapidity it now feels quite ludicrous to me that, for most of that period of time, I remember being rather bored.

Mav continued calling into doubt the security of my person were I to stay within my own doors in Gamlo Road. For my part, naturally, I adamantly refused lodging, however temporarily, at a place so notorious as Vyssu’s. It was settled upon, finally, and not without considerable and heated debate, that the Department would supply a room for me,
incognito
, in a boardinghouse across the street.

What upward increment in propriety I thereby gained I am not certain, but I had ultimately made the point with Mav that if anyone were responsible for the conduct and safety of my life, it was I myself alone. He had stated many times in the past that any wholly ethical civilization would leave each individual the sole exclusive arbiter of his, her, or rher own being; in his view this was the irreducible premise upon which societal decency must be founded. He had, on that account, no consistent alternative but to cease arguing with me upon the matter of where I was to live for the remainder of this situation. I did not happily anticipate applying the same line of reasoning upon my mother, but determined to address
that
particular problem as well after the fact as could be managed.

To Zoobon, my duplicitous maidservant, I said simply that I was traveling for the Department under suitable chaperonage—which, in a manner, was true. The boardinghouse across from Vyssu’s was owned and operated by a sweet little old lurrie of extreme fragility and advanced years who would tolerate not the slightest apparent deviation from respectable behavior upon my part or that of any other resident or visitor. Mav or Fatpa must call upon me in the tiny lobby under rher surparental eye and within a narrow set of hours appointed for the purpose, entering never further into the establishment. I must also, when I stepped out, return well before dusk each evening or face immediate eviction.

All in all, it can be said that I—as well as that sense of nicety my parents had gone to some pains to instill in me—was highly satisfied with these arrangements. It was not until some long time afterward that Mav informed me, with the blandest humor rippling through his fur, that the strictures in that house were intended (vainly, it would seem) to allay certain suspicions among the local populace and authorities: a “secret” ring of Unarchists habitually gathered deep down in the basement there, under the enthusiastic leadership of my sweet little old lurrie, every second, fifth, and eighth day of the week, around a guttering candle.

This was, I thought, a conspiracy not apparently destined to electrify the world.

At the time, however, I sat complacently ensconced within my hired rooms up on the first floor, staring down across the street to Vyssu’s, relatively well satisfied with things, as I have said. Pah in his wisdom knows there was little enough else to do with myself. Mav’s provocative notice had appeared in all the papers, copies of which were scattered about the floor of my own self-inflicted hermitage, every line of every single page read over and over and over again for want of some alternative activity. It was a waiting game that we were playing, I reminded myself every hour with less and less conviction, a game of agonizing ennui with only the vague uncertain promise of some stark and violent terror toward its conclusion as a point of relief. I have come since to understand this as a principal characteristic of all law-enforcement work. Mav compared it to the baiting of a trap for predators with a bit of meat and began referring to it as a “steak-out” until I convinced him that the turn of phrase lacked elegance.

I am glad I am a paracauterist where emergencies are dealt with, for the most part, by appointment.

Having, as I say, then, little or nothing else upon my plate, I decided to increase what little expertise I possessed concerning the pistol with which Mav and I had practiced. Gathering that the landlurry would most likely look askance at my peppering rher walls and ceiling with bullet pocks, and that the other inhabitants of this place might be inclined to complain over the noise of it, I reasoned finally that many of the prerequisite skills might be enhanced with the firing of no actual shots at all: the steady hand, the lining up of sights, the careful and deliberate pull upon the trigger—all of these might well be practiced without benefit of ammunition, sound, or fury (that latter, most likely, from my neighbors). In addition, I thought, the absence of dreadful recoil might indeed prevent any further engenderment upon my part of what Mav had called a flinch—yet another inelegance of his.

Thus I aimed the little gun at lamp brackets upon the walls, decorative cornices of buildings I could see past my curtains, at insects or little accidental whorls in the sand upon the floor; I squeezed the handle, trying to keep the sights aligned until the striker fell. I suppose I must have repeated these exercises, along with practicing the loading and unloading of the thing, nine thousand times or more in the many weary hours I sat alone in that room. Should ever I be set upon by angry lamp brackets, wild cornices, aggressive bugs, or vicious sandy lumps, I would now be well protected.