A Whiff Of Madness Part 2

"Mully? Mully, little pet, where are you?" There was a rattling off in the bamboo sector of the garden. "Mully, don't tease your poor gran."

Mulligan said to Summer, "I want you to know why I'm really-"

"Mully, I fear I'll perish amidst this dreadful bamboo."

"We're right over here by the sundial, dear Gran," called Mulligan. He hit the side of his leg with a fist After some more rattling, and a bit of crackling, a very old birdwoman came stumbling into view.

She wore a loose-hanging flowered lycra dress, and supported herself with two ebony canes. Her yellow beak was laced with fine cracks; most of the feathers from the top of her head had fallen out There he is.

There's my sweetest little Mully, my long-lost honey-bunch, my little dumpling come back to me from the womb of the vast deep. And good morning to you, gentlemen."

Palma popped to his feet. "Good morning, Lady Thorkin." He bowed over her half-feathered old hand. "I am Palma, the noted photographer, and my a.s.sociate is the justly famed Jack Summer."

"We're honored that two such esteemed journalists as yourselves," said Lady Thorkin, "have journeyed across the limitless gulf of s.p.a.ce to help spread the truth about my little b.u.t.tercup to the far corners of the universe."

That's our specialty," Palma told her. "Last year alone we publicized three dumplings, two b.u.t.tercups-"

Summer cut in. "We'd like to hear what you have to say, Lady Thorkin."

The birdwoman chuckled. "I never tire of discussing my little prodigal dumpling; do I, honeybunch?"

"No, certainly not, Gran." Standing behind her back, Mulligan pointed to himself and then to Summer, silently beaking the words, "Want to talk to you alone."

While guiding the old woman to a wrought-iron chair, Summer shot the claimant a puzzled look."Why?" he asked out of the corner of his mouth.

"It's about-"

"Hounds!" said Palma.

Barking and baying had started off beyond the rose bushes.

"I'm afraid," said Mulligan, "that Father has let the killer dogs loose again."

CHAPTER 4.

"Thank you so much; well be relatively safe up here," gasped Lady Thorkin as Palma boosted her to the top of the enormous greenhouse. "You're a real honeybunch, even though you don't have any hair."

The bald photographer took a position near the ancient birdwoman. "Don't have any feathers either, but despite such handicaps-"

"Your father knows we're out here interviewing you, doesn't he?" Summer asked the claimant.

Mulligan was squatting on several neogla.s.s" panels. "Oh, yes-which is why he unchained the dogs," he said. "He doesn't approve of my talking to reporters." Three ferocious Venusian police dogs had located them, and were leaping and snarling directly below.

"Does he approve of the hounds rending your sweet old granny asunder?" inquired Palma.

"He usually calls them off before they do any serious harm. Although last week a caricaturist from Interstellar Punch had his-" Boom! Bam! Boom!

"Goodness me," exclaimed Lady Thorkin, "the steam hounds must be on the blink again."

Chunks of metal began clattering down around them, smas.h.i.+ng holes in the neogla.s.s squares.

"My father was recently persuaded to add steam-operated robot hounds to his kennel,"

explained Mulligan. "They don't function as smoothly as he was led to believe; notably the boilers in some of the creatures."

Boom!

"I fear that was Rex," said the old birdwoman.

A plastic dog snout clinked down on Palma's head, bounced off and fell into the greenhouse.

"Your favorite robot, was he?"

"Yes, he had a really agreeable personality, for a machine. Many's the time-"

"Are you scoundrels ready to come to terms?" Five more huge and nasty dogs, three real and two steam-driven, had come charging through the shrubs. Close on their heels stalked a middle-aged birdman in a tweed suit.

"It's Father." Mulligan brought his beak close to Summer's ear arid lowered his voice. "I won't be able to tell you what I want to now. You'll have to try to get back some-"

"You there, the chap with the hairless pate, are you John Summer?" Wattas Starbuck, surrounded by howling dogs, was shaking a feathery fist at them.

Palma inched closer to the edge of the slightly slanting neogla.s.s roof. "Do you mean to say you don't recognize me? A man whose incisive photographs are known far and wide throughout the Barnum System of planets as well as the Earth System? A photographer whose name is a household word in the farthest reaches of the galaxy. I am Palma."

"If you're not this rogue Summer, I'll thank you to intrude no farther, sir."

"I'm Summer," said Summer.

"Yes, I should have guessed from that sneaky look in your eyes, the mean slant of the mouth, the cringing att.i.tude as you crouch there in abject fear. Obviously you're a journalist."

"We'll have to get together again sometime when you don't have your dogs."

"I doubt not I can best you in a fair combat, sir." He silenced his dogs, who sat staring anxiously at the group atop the greenhouse. "Many a poacher has reason to dread the name of Wattas Starbuck.

With naught but these two fists I've-""I'm not in the mood to play mine's-bigger-than-yours," cut in Summer. "Do you have anything else you want to chat about?"

"I didn't expect anyone in your profession to be so forthright," said Wattas. "Very well, sir, we will come to the point. This so-called interview was arranged without my knowledge or consent. The Starbuck clan has been enough smeared and maligned by the media. Like our dedicated king, and other great men of the age, we are targets for the unjustified darts of the pygmies of the press. I will allow you and your a.s.sociate to depart unmolested by myself or my faithful pack of fearsome dogs. You must, however, promise to print not a word about your visit here today. You must, furthermore, never attempt to interview this fawning impostor or my barmy old mum again."

"Oh, Watty, you're not being the dumpling you once-"

"Well, Summer, do I have your word, for what it's worth?"

"Sure," said Summer.

"Hold on, Jack," said Palma. "Freedom of the press is like a flaming sword and we oughtn't to allow our right to speak out to be trampled by a pack of hounds and-"

"Might as well admit we've been beaten," said Summer. "Mr. Starbuck, we accept your terms."

"Good, I a.s.sumed you, being a mealymouthed coward at heart, would." Wattas bent close to one of the dogs. "Back to the kennels, the lot of you."

With regretful gazes at their lost prey, the dogs sulked away along the lanes of flowering plants.

"Don't forget," whispered Mulligan just before Summer and Palma leaped to the ground.

When they were pa.s.sing, with several burly servants close behind, through the outer gates of the Starbuck estate Palma said, "My strong extrasensory powers tell me Wattas Starbuck knew we were coming. He staged his little dog show to impress us."

"No doubt," said Summer. "Let's hope we impressed him with the fact we came to Peregrine solely to interview his spurious son."

The bald photographer was scanning the roadway. "Looks like Miss McNulty and her famous straightforward hangers are not here to give us a lift back to town," he said.

"We'll walk."

"Mulligan conveyed the idea he had something important to tell us " Palma kicked at the white gravel.

"Wants to persuade me he's the real thing."

"Might be more than that," said Palma, stroking his head. "Well let's see what Mayhew has to say."

"Mayhew?"

"The editor of the weekly."

"I forgot his name."

"Not like you."

Summer halted, stood for nearly a minute staring back at the Starbuck mansion. "Something ..."

he said.

"What?"

"I don't know yet."

The lane ran out of cobblestones and turned to dirt It was midafternoon, but the sky over the company town had a sooty twilight look. The lane was empty except for a dead dog sprawled in front of a narrow tight-shut tailor shop.

"You can't beat a big city for excitement," observed Palma, wiping dust off his scalp.

Spotting the faded Town Weekly sign, Summer Said, This street's too empty, too many blinds pulled down, too many shutters up."

"Could be business hereabouts is going through a periodic decline."

Summer approached the neogla.s.s door of the newspaper office slowly. The door stood a few inches open. He pushed it, then went inside the shadowy room beyond.

There was a thick smell of printer's ink in the air, and something else.

"Gunpowder," said Palma."They still use that kind of gun on Peregrine." Summer ran for the door marked Editor.

"Mayhew!"

Something fell down on the other side of the door and wood and papers clattered down.

A small gray-haired man was lying on his side next to the rolltop desk. His in-box, contents spilled, was on the hardwood floor beside him. There was blood all over him, streaked across the front of his blue s.h.i.+rt, smeared over his arms, still oozing from the three bullet holes in his chest Palma reached him first and eased an arm around his shoulders. "Jesus, Mayhew, what-"

"Listen," said the dying editor in a dim, faraway voice, "I found ... found out too much ... they ...

didn't like ... two people ... two people you ,.. must see ... Ferrier ... Dr. Ferrier ... Tully Keep ... try ..."

He stopped talking all at once.

Palma lowered Mayhew to the floor, then stood up and away from him. "Dead and gone, the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d. One minute he's sitting here getting out pathetic little newspaper and then-"

"Let's go," said Summer.

CHAPTER 5.

The waiter kept his furry thumb in Summer's soup while journeying across the dim, crowded restaurant from the kitchen to the table. "Here you go, skinhead." He banged the bowl down in front of Palma.

Wiping sloshed soup from his front, the bald photographer said, "You're slightly off target My friend ordered the stockpot soup, whereas I ordered the garden fresh tossed salad."

The catman shrugged, said, "So pa.s.s it across to him," and headed once again for the kitchen.

Palma handed the bowl of thick, greenish soup over to the other side of the small table. "I'm trying to keep my thumb exactly where his was so as not to Spread-"

"Why is it," asked Summer, ignoring the bowl of soup, "that on every d.a.m.n planet in the known universe you unfailingly drag me to the most unG.o.dly eating places ever-"

"Churl's is the most popular restaurant in the capital, Jack. People fight for reservations. I had to bribe three-"

"Catch, Baldy."

A plate of salad came sailing through the smoke-clogged air from a distance of several feet away.

Palma made a valiant grab, but missed.

The plate, shedding folliage, continued on until it smacked a prosperous lizard banker over one ear.

"Lousy catch," remarked their waiter. "I hope you do better on the main course."