A Whiff Of Madness Part 11

"Yes." Das.h.i.+ng to the door, she yanked it open. "By way of the kitchen."

They ran along a wood-paneled corridor, across a steamy kitchen, and past a lizardwoman cook."Mercy me!" she exclaimed "They really do have an ox," observed Palma.

One more door and they were in the night and rain again.

The stable, a hundred yards away, they did not reach.

Three cloaked figures made that impossible. A catman, a green-feathered birdman, and a black man with a dead-white beard All of them armed with shockrods and pistols.

"In the name of King Waldo and the sovereign territory of Laranja East," said the catman, the rain pelting him and making pocks in his fur, "I hereby charge you both with violating the laws and statutes forbidding robbery on the highway. I further charge you, miss, with being none other than the ruthless Scarlet Angel and you, sir, with being her paramour and accomplice."

"I am the Scarlet Angel." The girl stood straight, paying no attention to the hard-falling rain that was. .h.i.tting at her. "This man, however, is an innocent traveler whose path happened to cross mine."

The lizard Territorial Policeman sneezed and laughed at the same time. " 'Tis hardly likely an innocent wayfarer would, purely by chance, come bounding out of the back door of the Nose and Foot with you."

"I'm Palma," explained Palma, "working for Coult Publications, out of the planet Barnum. You can contact their attorneys in-"

"You may once have been what you say, sir," said the catman. "This night, though, you are the companion of the Scarlet Angel. As such you will join her on the gallows. You will be hanged, drawn, and quartered. At the same time the Scarlet Angel is hanged."

"Well, if I'm going to die I'd like to snap a few last photos to send home to the folks." He reached for the camera case containing his stungun.

They were much quicker than Jacques. Two shock-sticks. .h.i.t Palma before he drew the weapon.

CHAPTER 17.

"We'll be safe in this part of the capital," said the spurious Mulligan Starbuck. With a feathered hand pressed to the slimy wall stones he was guiding Summer and Dr. Ferrier along the down-slanting alley. Thick gray fog was closer than the opposite wall.

"I don't believe ... I really don't believe I've ever been here in all my-"

"Slops!" A shuttered window snapped open up above, and a bucket of garbage was dumped out into the foggy night.

Summer dodged most of it. "Watch out."

Dr. Ferrier did not fare so well. "A most interesting, most interesting, style of life prevails here.

What is this area called?"

"Suicide Slum." The birdman handed a realsilk handkerchief to the doctor. "One of the things King Waldo vowed, on the eve of his coronation, was to clean up and beautify it."

"Slops!"

Splat!

"Not a drop, not one single drop, splashed me that time."

Summer aimed a question at the spot in the fog where he sensed the doctor was. "King Waldo didn't exactly keep his promises to you, did he, Dr. Ferrier?"

"No, he certainly behaved ... Hum. I have the distinct impression I just stepped on a heap of animal dung. What could it have been?"

"Animal dung," said Mulligan.

"This is quite interesting, quite interesting," said Ferrier, "to see how the lower segment-"

"What made the king pop you into St. Charlie's?"

That was because of Ferrier's Special Blend Number Three," answered the catman.

"What's-""Granny!"

Thud!

"That landed very hard," remarked Dr. Ferrier, glancing around at the encircling fog. "Must have been a good quant.i.ty, a very large quant.i.ty of garbage. And odd that they shouted 'Granny' rather than 'Slops.'"

"That's because it was somebody's grandmother," explained Mulligan. "They have a low opinion of old age in the slum."

Summer persisted as they progressed down the foggy alley. "What's Ferrier's Special Blend Number Three?"

"To more fully answer that, to answer it thoroughly, I'd best explain the nature of Ferrier's Special Blend Number One and, thereafter, Ferrier's Special Blend Number Two."

"You can do that later," Summer told him. "Tell me about Number Three, what it has to do with King Waldo and the Phantom of the Fog."

"I can fill you in," volunteered Mulligan. "Tried to give you some of what I found out when you visited the estate."

"We a.s.sumed you simply wanted to push your case for being the one and only authentic Mulligan Starbuck."

"Not at all, as you-"

"Estruma!" came a shout from above.

The doctor asked, "What's Estruma?"

Splat!

"Another word for slops."

"All over the front of me, the entire front of my garments. Most discouraging, very discouraging, when I was starting to believe I'd become most artful at dodging-"

"Slops!"

Splop!

"Again, yet again."

Mulligan took hold of Summer's arm. "You appear to be slowing down."

"Feel better than I did. Now tell me about this staff."

"The special blend is a spray Ferrier concocted. He's been fooling with behavior-altering mists for years out at the university. Initially he was trying for stuff to control his students. You know, a squirt and they become attentive, insightful, possibly even a little more attentive. That was Number One. A few months ago he stumbled on Number Three. This spray was different."

"My greatest breakthrough, undoubtedly my greatest breakthrough to date," put in the doctor. "A perfectly useful, thoroughly useful, invention had it not been abused by our monarch."

They had reached the end of the alley. After groping at the fog for a moment, the birdman said, "This way next, to our left."

Up ahead, masked by the thick gray mist, there was a growling. Growling and snarling from several throats, snapping and yelping.

"A pack of animals lies in our path, directly in our path."

Mulligan slowed but did not stop. "Not animals, but they won't bother us," he said.

In single file they entered another alley. An old man lay flat on his back on the dirt, arms and legs widespread. Five boys, small and none older than seven, nearly naked, were tearing the old man's clothes from him as they searched for money and food. They snarled at each other, snapped and growled, while they worked.

"Not a good place to pa.s.s out," said Mulligan.

"This is indeed an education. I had no idea such things occurred in our city. My next spray will have to address itself to this problem. Yes, Ferrier's Special Number Four will-"

"You were explaining Number Three," Summer reminded the birdman.

"Number Three was for military use. You spray a whiff of Ferrier's Special Blend Number Three in the face of your average soldier-puff-he turns into a fighting dynamo, for an hour or so anyway.""My intention was that the spray should be used to give courage to the soldier who might experience a moment of fear prior to battle. Little did I realize, had I but known, the military establishment would use it indiscriminately. No, such was not my original intention or, I need hardly say, I would never have donated Ferrier's Special Blend Number Three to the government of our territory."

The stuff must have side effects, huh?" Summer asked. That explains King Waldo."

"In some cases the blend is addictive," answered Mulligan. "Once you use it, you have to keep on."

"An effect, I might add, which had only turned up in point-oh-four percent of the laboratory tests."

"Why'd King Waldo start using the blend in the first place?"

"He's been worrying about getting old," said the claimant. "He figured the stuff would pep him up, since it'd boost a soldier's morale and stamina. Sometimes when you're sixty-one you get odd notions."

"It's happened before."

"Anyhow, the king started sniffing Number Three. He became a blend addict ... plus with him the stuff has an unusual side effect."

"It causes him to kill old ladies?"

"Yep, when King Waldo uses it he turns not into a fearless fighting man but a skulking strangler,"

said Mulligan. "I began to hear about that, pick up little bits of information, after I'd been inside the Starbuck mansion only a few days."

"We never had one strangler among our test subjects, not one, not a single-"

"Help! b.l.o.o.d.y murder! It's him!"

From a street beyond the alley came a scream.

The Phantom! It's the Phantom!"

Summer ran ... as best he could. The fog hid everything from him. Pointing himself at the screaming he yelled, "We're coming." He felt, rather than saw, that he was out of the alley. "Where are you?"

Only silence now. The fog was hanging motionless all around him.

Something over there. He could make it oat through the fog. Black, a cloak. Summer headed for what he guessed must be the cloaked Phantom.

The Phantom was aware of him. He spun, leaving his victim half strangled. Hat pulled low, cloak wrapped around him, he ran into the fog.

Summer pursued him though he couldn't seem to cut down the distance between them. A pain was developing in his side.

The Phantom of the Fog dived into another alley.

Summer went after him, "Slops!"

Splas.h.!.+

Directly in Summer's path the garbage and dung fell. Both his feet hit it and he went sliding. He flapped his arms, hollered, but couldn't get his balance back. He banged into the tacky wooden wall on his left, and fell down flat in the mud and prior slops.

Though he made it to his feet again in under a minute, Summer knew the phantom was way and beyond catching.

"Summer?"

"Yeah, in here."

Mulligan materialized out of the mist. The old woman is going to survive. Dr. Ferrier is helping her into the nearest flophouse. She's got no idea what the strangler looks like, says his face was all m.u.f.fled,"

he said. "Are you OK?"

"For a guy who let the killer get away and then rolled around in s.h.i.+t, I guess I'm fine," said Summer.

CHAPTER 18

"Quite a den of thieves, a veritable den of thieves," observed Dr. Ferrier from the top of the short flight of stone steps. "Where are we?"

"Den of Thieves number two-oh-six," said Mulligan, "one of the strongest, most active guilds on the whole planet."

"Who's your young friend, Mully?" inquired an enormous catwoman sitting at a wooden table near the entrance of the cellar. She raised a lopsided pair of black gla.s.ses off her eyes. "Looks like he's been rolling in c.u.mshaw."

"We had an encounter with the Phantom," explained the claimant. "Almost laid hands on him, Blind Tabby."