Enigmatic Pilot_ A Tall Tale Too True Part 3

Travelers flowed back and forth on the gangplanks in chimney hats or swis.h.i.+ng skirts. One afternoon the men had a shooting compet.i.tion on the top deck, blasting at buzzards circling the remains of a runaway slave who had washed up on a sandbar. The weather was growing warmer and the bugs thicker, sultry nights becoming humid with whiskey and cigar smoke, perfume dabbed to wrists and crotches.

St. Ives was well acquainted with the s.h.i.+p's chief entertainer, a singer named Viola Mercy, a tall buxom brunette whose lavender-scented pantaloons filled Lloyd's mind with notions and cravings of a new and exquisitely painful kind. Thrice a day she performed in the dining saloon of the Fidele Fidele, which was laid out around a dance-hall stage with a heavy velvet aubergine curtain. And thrice a day she would sing a song that the boy grew to love.

There's a place I know Where I always go There to dream of you And hope that you'll be true And someday I pray That you'll find your way Back to the secret place Within my heart.

He became obsessed with the songstress and her exotic apparel: ostrich feathers, silk stockings, lace bra.s.sieres. How he wanted to infiltrate her private domain and experience the majesty of this dark beauty. (In truth, she kept a flask of rye in her garter belt and had done as much singing on her back as she had onstage.) Meanwhile, St. Ives opened the boy's eyes to the larger world, relating to him the news of the day, with its cults of gangsterism becoming political forces-Tammany Hall warring with the Bowery Boys in New York, angry hordes descending on Mormons, Protestant secret societies with names like the Supreme Order of the Star-Spangled Banner murdering Catholics, abolitionists dragged through the streets, slave families broken, the women raped, the men castrated and lynched. St. Ives had dire warnings about what lay ahead, although he himself took no sides and indeed was chiefly concerned about how such turmoil might be turned to personal advantage. "In confusion there is profit, my young friend," he told Lloyd.

More to the boy's liking, however, the gambler let him examine the metal hand. The plates that formed the exterior were made of polished steel, but so well forged that they provided exceptional strength without the corresponding weight. Inside lurked the potential for a fantastic array of implements, from the throat-cutting blades that had appeared at the poker table to a choice of such accessories as cigar scissors, a lock pick, and a sewing kit-not to mention that the miniature compartments could also be used to hold coins or keys, vials of various potions (such as chloral hydrate), snuff, ink, even poison. However, St. Ives was not forthcoming with any intelligence about how he had come by it, until one evening.

It was a close night and a full moon shone down on the river, so the captain had the boiler fired. Lloyd had been encouraged out of the family's cabin to allow his parents some time alone, a practice he was growing more and more curious about. Only the thump of the paddle blades stirred the quiet, so that the occasional sounds of a baying dog or the cras.h.i.+ng of a caving bank reached the deck, where he found the gambler smoking a cigar, staring down at the wake.

"You wonder about it, don't you, boy?" St. Ives asked, and tapped a bright ash into the water. "How I came by the hand-and how I came to lose my own."

"I do," Lloyd agreed. "There's no hiding there's a story behind it."

"Well put, lad," the gambler said, nodding. "And well spoken. Like a gentleman. I will reward your discretion. After all, we're friends, aren't we?"

"Partners," Lloyd responded.

"Indeed. Gentlemanly put again. Well. Some people would say I asked to have this done to me."

"You asked for it?"

"I said some some people would say that," the gambler answered, and his face went gla.s.sy, as if he were now looking at something long ago. Then some hatred surged up within him, like a dead log that had been submerged in the river. people would say that," the gambler answered, and his face went gla.s.sy, as if he were now looking at something long ago. Then some hatred surged up within him, like a dead log that had been submerged in the river.

"Ten years ago, I used to be the secretary to a very rich man in the East. He valued my memory and my head for calculations. He was a fellow of extreme cleverness and cruelty-Junius Rutherford, or so he called himself then, but that was not his real name, I am sure. Owner of the Behemoth Formulary and Gun Works in Delaware. For himself he made the hand-and others like it. Said he'd lost his own in a foreign war-or with the Injuns or in a sword fight. His stories changed with his audience."

"So do yours," Lloyd pointed out.

"W-ell...yes..." stammered St. Ives. "A man must be flexible, given the unkindness of fate. But I am inclined to think that he was the cause of his own misfortune. He had the marking of an acid burn on his face as well. My belief is that one of his experiments backfired on him. He was always fiddling with new combinations of chemicals-schemes for weaponry. And other things. Weirder things. 'Better to be the head of a louse than the tail of a lion' was his motto, and if ever there were a fellow to plant the head of one creature upon another he was the one. His estate was like nothing you can imagine."

"How so?" Lloyd asked, certain that he could imagine much more than St. Ives.

"He called it the Villa of the Mysteries, and the name was apt. There were lightning rods all about, and he had hung up effigies around the grounds to keep the meddlesome townsfolk from spying. That and his dogs, a breed I had never seen before and hope never to see again. Gruesome beasts."

"Go on," Lloyd said.

"Well...I know this will sound like flapdoodle, but he carried a seash.e.l.l around with him. Like a polished black conch. He listened to it-as people sometimes do with sh.e.l.ls, thinking they can hear the sea. But he did it often and, stranger still, he spoke into his."

"What did he say?" Lloyd asked. "Who was he talking to?"

"I wish I knew." St. Ives sighed. "He spoke in a language I could never understand. To whom, I have no idea. I a.s.sumed he was touched in the head. And I had good reason to think so. The estate had an artificial lake, and on the water he had a fleet of automatic model s.h.i.+ps that reenacted the British defeat of the Spanish Armada. And there was a greenhouse full of orchids that looked like they were made of gla.s.s, but they were alive and grew. G.o.d's truth. He loved books and fine things, but most of all he prized unexplainable things."

"How do you mean, unexplainable unexplainable?" Lloyd asked. There were not many things you could actually perceive that could not be explained, he felt. Even the way the fancy woman with the medicine show had seemed able to be in two places at once back in Zanesville. It was the things that went unnoticed that were mysterious.

"There was a collection of paintings. Flemish, I think," the gambler continued, puffing. "Milky, watery landscapes without much obvious interest-except that over time they changed."

"You mean with the light?"

"No!" the gambler exclaimed. "I mean changed changed. One day a peasant in the picture would be pitching hay, the next day a hay cart would be seen departing-a cart that had not been there before!"

Interesting, Lloyd thought.

"And Rutherford had a huge aquarium that he would swim in himself. He had a kind of vessel built-it looked like a diamond coffin-in which he could stay submerged for long periods of time. He used it to study his electric eels and those jellyfish creatures we call the Portuguese man-of-war."

Lloyd gave a low whistle. He would have liked some eels himself.

"Yes!" St. Ives shook his head. "You see, I would not have been in his service had I not found something in him to admire-and there was much to hold my interest. The trouble was I found too much to admire and ended up taking too much interest in his wife, an auburn-haired beauty with eyes like sapphires."

"You fell in love-with his wife?" Lloyd blurted, but when he spoke an image of Miss Viola rose up in his mind. A glimpse he had had of one of her corsets. It had become confused in his mind with his mystic twin.

"And she with me!" St. Ives replied. "My beautiful Celeste. Never will I experience such bliss in this life again!"

A storm of rage pa.s.sed through the gambler's eyes.

"Rutherford was cruel to Celeste and ignored her-spent too much time with his compounds and machines. He was also addicted to a narcotic that he manufactured himself. A transparent liquid, tinted a faint blue-like damson plums. He called it Mantike. Every night he would inject some of the foul stuff and slip off into a meditative stupor in his library. But there were other eyes and ears about the place, and when that b.a.s.t.a.r.d found out about our sin he drugged me with something-whether it was the Blue Evil I do not know. I woke to find myself secured to a table in one of his infernal laboratories. And I remained awake. No drugs or sedatives after that. There he conducted a little piece of theater involving surgical instruments."

At these words the gambler's body seemed to quiver in the warm air, while Lloyd's thoughts flashed back to his rabbit Phineas. His father was wrong about him never thinking of Phineas. St. Ives spat into the river.

"But then why did he give you this?" Lloyd asked, pointing to the hand.

"Another of his hideous experiments." St. Ives chuckled. "How the nerve connections work I have no idea. But this is not the metal addition that it may appear. I feel feel the hand. It is a part of me, or I a part of it. There are other extensions and accessories that I carry, but the hand itself I cannot remove. I will die with it attached to me. Yet it will not die. And that is perhaps why he enabled me so-as an expression of his power and ingenuity. The rest he did to me was not enough. He wanted a constant, visible, and necessary reminder always before me. To make me forever dependent on his technics. Who knows? Perhaps, for all the agony he inflicted, I may have been lucky not to have been turned more fully into one of his gadgets. I might well be a mannequin whole, and not just in hand." the hand. It is a part of me, or I a part of it. There are other extensions and accessories that I carry, but the hand itself I cannot remove. I will die with it attached to me. Yet it will not die. And that is perhaps why he enabled me so-as an expression of his power and ingenuity. The rest he did to me was not enough. He wanted a constant, visible, and necessary reminder always before me. To make me forever dependent on his technics. Who knows? Perhaps, for all the agony he inflicted, I may have been lucky not to have been turned more fully into one of his gadgets. I might well be a mannequin whole, and not just in hand."

"I don't understand," Lloyd murmured.

"He was far, far ahead of his time, was Mr. Rutherford. His toy caravels were ingenious, but he was capable of many other feats. Oh, yes! He had designed and built a mechanical manservant. A sort of butler named Zadoc. What it was powered by I do not know, he would not reveal it-but it was not steam. A very handsome but ghastly porcelain face. Gave Celeste nightmares. But he was working on much more complex contraptions still."

"And what...happened...to him?" the boy whispered.

"I set a b.o.o.by trap in his laboratory," the gambler replied with a vengeful, melancholy laugh.

"His body was never found. But pieces of another's were. My sweet Celeste. I believe she thought that I was trapped in the fire and was trying...to save me."

St. Ives's silver prosthesis flashed in the moonlight.

"I was questioned by the authorities, but I knew enough of his ways to make it look like an accident. And what an accident!"

"But what...became of Rutherford?" Lloyd asked.

"Ah! That is is the question," the gambler said, nodding. "Well, you see, he was not a well-liked man. Almost everything he did he did in secret. He was a hard employer and a recluse who rarely ventured off the estate, and he seemed to have no close friends or immediate kin-other than my poor darling. The neighbor folk all feared him. There were stories about children in the vicinity who had gone missing. Who can say? But the members of the local constabulary were willing to take the path of least resistance. They came to believe that perhaps he had perished in the explosion, too-blown to bits, as I had hoped he would be." the question," the gambler said, nodding. "Well, you see, he was not a well-liked man. Almost everything he did he did in secret. He was a hard employer and a recluse who rarely ventured off the estate, and he seemed to have no close friends or immediate kin-other than my poor darling. The neighbor folk all feared him. There were stories about children in the vicinity who had gone missing. Who can say? But the members of the local constabulary were willing to take the path of least resistance. They came to believe that perhaps he had perished in the explosion, too-blown to bits, as I had hoped he would be."

"But you think differently?" Lloyd asked.

"I am certain in my soul that he is still alive!" St. Ives e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "His will left his estate to some distant relative in Louisiana-probably himself under another name. His business interests were absorbed by a consortium called the Behemoth Innovation Company, and the estate was systematically denuded of all its objets and apparatus."

"Did you investigate?" Lloyd asked meekly.

"Can you imagine me not doing so?" the gambler exclaimed, and then he drew his voice back down low. "The so-called relative now lives abroad, and I have not been able to find a trace of any news about him in any of the foreign papers-I even hired a London detective. Not a skerrick of a clue. As to the consortium, they have offices registered in several cities but there is no information about any any of their directors. They are but shadows, as near as I can tell. And that is why I ride the riverboats, or one of the reasons-to one day learn something of his whereabouts. He would have a new name, and perhaps a new-looking face. But he is not dead! The hidden may be seeking and the missing may return. Remember that, my young friend. Beware, if you should ever cross paths with a man a few years older than I-with a hand like this, or some such invention. He would have found a way to make a better one by now, devil take him. Who knows what he has learned how to do in the years that have pa.s.sed since what he did to me?" of their directors. They are but shadows, as near as I can tell. And that is why I ride the riverboats, or one of the reasons-to one day learn something of his whereabouts. He would have a new name, and perhaps a new-looking face. But he is not dead! The hidden may be seeking and the missing may return. Remember that, my young friend. Beware, if you should ever cross paths with a man a few years older than I-with a hand like this, or some such invention. He would have found a way to make a better one by now, devil take him. Who knows what he has learned how to do in the years that have pa.s.sed since what he did to me?"

With a vehemence Lloyd had not seen before, the gambler heaved his cigar into the river and spun on his heel, heading to his stateroom. Nothing more was said about the mutilation or the vanished designer of the mechanical hand, but the creatures and contrivances of the lost Villa exerted a p.r.o.nounced fascination for Lloyd that was outweighed only by his ripening interest in Viola Mercy.

She said that she came from Maryland but, like the gambler, she seemed a child of the river and the road. Bawdy and quicktempered, in the boy's presence she became demure. When she drank, however, in between performances, her voice deepened and her eyes burned with a lecherous yearning. One afternoon he found himself sneaking into her cabin. He had meant to steal but a glimpse, then he was sniffing her pillow-when there came the sound of hushed, lewd voices at the door!

Mortified, he leaped under the bed. The door opened and Miss Viola entered with the gambler. They drank at first, absinthe, the green liquor with the bittersweet licorice scent that St. Ives favored, preparing it with the long ornamental perforated spoon that reminded Lloyd of a decorative trowel, ceremoniously straining water poured from a carafe through a crystal chunk of sugar and then waiting and watching, and finally stirring the mix of liquor, water, and sugar until it reached a cloudy green shade he deemed right. They took a few sips, and Miss Viola shed her long dress with the plunging neckline and her bodice and something else that Lloyd couldn't see. They tumbled onto the bed and lay there together, sipping their drinks for what seemed a long time. Then they came together and started to thrash about-until St. Ives muttered something and began to fiddle with his prosthesis.

Miss Viola's cabin had once been one of the more opulent staterooms, but times had not been kind to the owners of the Fidele Fidele and the chamber's former glamour had faded, so that it now possessed a peeling gaudiness along with a noisy excuse for a bra.s.s bed (which William Henry Harrison had once slept in before becoming president). It was the audible complaint of the bedsprings that allowed the boy to wriggle into a position on the floor where he could catch sight of the looking gla.s.s, in which the figures of the two adults were partially visible. There he lay, trying hard to hold his breath. and the chamber's former glamour had faded, so that it now possessed a peeling gaudiness along with a noisy excuse for a bra.s.s bed (which William Henry Harrison had once slept in before becoming president). It was the audible complaint of the bedsprings that allowed the boy to wriggle into a position on the floor where he could catch sight of the looking gla.s.s, in which the figures of the two adults were partially visible. There he lay, trying hard to hold his breath.

Viola Mercy's bosom was exposed, her hips arched, providing a tantalizing hint of that taboo pa.s.sage that led to the secret place within her heart. The gambler still had on his once dapper but now worn britches, and his bull's blood Spanish leather boots. The sleeve of his frilled s.h.i.+rt drooped down from a chair. His silver hand, however, was hard at work. The dagger that had been projected from the index finger had been replaced by a device of equal length, significantly greater girth, and arguably far more ingenious utility, which St. Ives referred to as the tickler.

The "tickling" went on for a long time, with Miss Viola's rough whisper rising into what sounded like an asthmatic crisis. The boy had heard a similar sound coming from his mother from time to time, but nothing as both feral and restrained as this. Another scent filled the room, distinct but confused-like wild onions and fish eggs. Then there was a shudder that shook the bed, and Lloyd was sure that he was going to be found out. Instead, St. Ives rolled off and began dismantling his mechanical finger piece.

"Don't you fret, honey," Miss Viola said. "Most men can't do as well."

The gambler started to say something but choked on his words and reached for his clothes after draining his gla.s.s. Not long after he'd left the room, Miss Viola rose, poured water from a jug into a bowl, and bathed, humming to herself. Powder and perfume were added, and then came the slow, measured ritual of dressing. It was a delicious agony for Lloyd, who could more hear and smell than see her, and he was forced to wait, with his heart pounding, until she was at last prepared for another performance. The door clicked behind her when she departed, and still he waited until he was sure she was not about to return to make his escape.

That night, when Lloyd closed his eyes and tried to imagine his dead sister, all he could see was Miss Viola.

The next day he sneaked into the entertainer's cabin again. He couldn't help himself. This time he chose as his vantage place her steamer trunk, a great battered box that reminded him of a coffin but had the consolation of facing directly toward the bed and of being filled with costumes and underthings, all permeated by her woman scent. There, snuggled tight, he waited and watched through a tiny crack that he made by balancing the lid on his head, counting the terrible wonderful minutes. Finally, she returned-without the gambler. Slowly-oh, so slowly-she disrobed, poured herself a drink from a flask, then water for bathing from the jug. It was excruciating. Then she reclined on the bed-without a st.i.tch on. She began to sing to herself, stroking her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and thighs with her right hand. And that was when it happened. He let the lid slip with a thump! Everything went so silent he could hear the piston rods driving in the distant engine room. He waited, then cracked the lid.

"Don't you know not to come into a lady's room without an invitation," Miss Viola scolded, and then let out a trill of confusing laughter.

"I-I'm s-sorry..." Lloyd stuttered.

"No, you're not," the dark lady replied. "Come. Here. Here."

He rose from the trunk as if from the dead, stiff, and yet intensely alert.

"Take off your clothes," she commanded, and with fumbling sweaty fingers he obeyed.

Perhaps the chanteuse first intended merely to teach him a lesson about spying. But as soon as she saw the boy, naked and aroused beside her bed, something happened in a secret place inside her, and she knew that for herself as much for him this was an opportunity that would never come again.

"You must never speak a word of this to anyone," she said. "Anyone."

Lloyd was not sure if he would ever be able to speak again at all.

CHAPTER 5.

The Amba.s.sadors from Mars HEPHAESTUS AND R RAPTURE WERE QUICK TO NOTE THE CHANGE IN the boy but were unable to guess the true nature of the cause. For the first time since leaving Zanesville, Lloyd seemed to have regained his inner light and his parents wondered if he might have reestablished his connection with Lodema. Not surprisingly, Lloyd declined to provide details, choosing both for his own sake and for the honor of Miss Viola to keep the matter secret. the boy but were unable to guess the true nature of the cause. For the first time since leaving Zanesville, Lloyd seemed to have regained his inner light and his parents wondered if he might have reestablished his connection with Lodema. Not surprisingly, Lloyd declined to provide details, choosing both for his own sake and for the honor of Miss Viola to keep the matter secret.

St. Ives, in his shrewd read of personality and mood, knew that something was different about the boy, but for reasons of his own did not inquire further. Instead, he slipped back inside his armor of pseudoaristocratic condescension, yielding only upon his farewell.

"Remember our lessons, Monkey," he said with a world-weary smile.

The boy had been quick to learn the art of card counting and odds estimation, as well as many of the psychological subtleties of gambling.

"I will," promised Lloyd, and for a moment he longed to disappear with his damaged friend-off into the teeming world in search of money and risk, dark fragrant women, and the grotesque riddles of Junius Rutherford.

Miss Viola gave him a quick, chaste kiss on the cheek in public, and a very long, slow kiss somewhere else in the privacy of her cabin before whisking off to find another drinking partner, lover, audience-whatever it was that she was searching for.

St. Louis had come a long way since the French fur trappers drifted by in birchbark canoes to barter with the Peoria Indians. And it had come a long way even faster since the first steamboat arrived from Louisville on July 27, 1817. Many Negroes still spoke French and signs of the Spanish colonial period were everywhere to be found, but the city's aura of European empire had been transformed into the energy and friction of a thriving outpost of western expansion. This was a border town now, a crossroads dividing North and South, East and West. Fifty steamboats provided packet service to exotic destinations such as Keokuk, Galena, and Davenport to the north, Louisville, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh to the east, and Memphis, Vicksburg, New Orleans, and Mobile to the south-while the pa.s.sage along the Missouri (where the Sitt.u.r.ds hoped to go) opened the way west to Independence, Westport, St. Joseph, Omaha, Council Bluffs, and beyond.

The city had boomed from a bluff-town harborside of around seventeen thousand people to almost four times that number, although the German Revolution and the Irish Potato Famine would soon swell the ranks to make it the largest center west of Pittsburgh.

Rapture had never imagined so many "parrysawls." Hephaestus counted the number of taverns and public houses. Lloyd took in the grim, overburdened Negroes and the quizzical Indians, the street Arabs, imbeciles, and ringworm hillbillies-offset by lily-white gentlemen and ladies rattling around in lacquer-black carriages with s.h.i.+ning wheels.

It was here that the infamous Dred Scott lawsuit would soon begin, igniting the Civil War, many would say, while still burning torturously in the collective memory was the case of Francis McIntosh, a free mulatto steamboat steward who had been chained to a tree and roasted alive in a slow fire in retaliation for stabbing a sheriff's deputy-as well as that of the antislavery newspaper editor Elijah P. Lovejoy, who was shot to death and trampled in nearby Alton, Illinois, a year later (still later to be the birthplace of a boy named Miles Davis).

While Lloyd had been busy learning his bold new lessons from St. Ives and Miss Viola, Hephaestus and Rapture had been engrossed in Micah's map and in planning the next stage of their journey to Texas. Their decision was to take a boat up the Missouri River to Independence, the southernmost of the supply towns on the route to the Pacific Coast. From there it looked like a long, strange trip across Kansas and what was then the Indian Territory-and would later become the state of Oklahoma-to reach what they hoped they would find in Texas: a new home.

Unfortunately, the riverboats for the Missouri journey were crowded-always crowded now-with such a miscellany of humanity that could scarcely be believed. One would have thought that America was coming apart at the seams, or mutating to form some crazed new creature.

Once again, money was tight. What provisions they'd been able to salvage from their earlier adventures were running low. "Life is a casting off," Hephaestus reminded his family (which prompted a jab in the ribs from Rapture). Young Lloyd took this opportunity to introduce the money he had made with St. Ives, pretending that he had found it along one of the bustling streets. His parents were too overjoyed to ask any questions.

Hephaestus reckoned that with this windfall they were able to afford pa.s.sage on the Spirit of Independence Spirit of Independence, newly overhauled and freshly painted. But they had to wait for three days. Ever worried about conserving money and knowing that they now had a stateroom to look forward to, the family sought temporary shelter in the loft of a mice-infested stable behind a glue renderer's.

It was in a thronging market square below on their second day that they were surprised to see a wagon decorated with rajas and angels-and who should be beside it but Professor Umberto, the traveling medicine showman and magician who had pa.s.sed through Zanesville. The spruiker was now calling himself Lemuel Z. Bricklin, "Master of Teratology, Clairvoyance, and Prestidigitation."

Lloyd wanted to say h.e.l.lo, his parents believing that the sight of the colorful wagon had brought back a fond memory of Zanesville. The truth was that their old town held but one happy recollection for the boy, and that had to do with his ghost sister's memorial. The reason he was interested in the professor was that he wanted to catch sight of the man's fine-figured a.s.sistant, Anastasia. His experience with Miss Viola had opened up a new kind of precocious craving within him. And the earlier magic had intrigued him.

Rapture, still miffed about the downturn in business she had experienced owing to the professor's arrival in Ohio, found herself "haa'dly 'kin" to say howdy to him in St. Louis and went off to round up ingredients to conjure a little "tas'e 'e mout" for the family's supper, reminding Hephaestus to keep an eye on the boy and for them both to stay out of trouble. Of course, Lloyd gave his father the slip.

The square was jammed with people buying fresh pig snouts or honeycomb tripe, and Hephaestus became so absorbed that he did not feel a pa.s.sing thief's practiced hand snake into his pocket and dexterously extract the money that was intended for their boat fare.

Lloyd, meanwhile, made a beeline for the medicine-show wagon, which had a tent set up behind it. The professor, a springy man with a waxed mustache and a receding hairline hidden under a leghorn hat, had just produced a fat Red Eagle cigar from a pocket in his coat when Lloyd strode up.

"What happened to your monkey?" the boy wanted to know.

"Why?" queried the professor, lighting the cigar with a crack of his fingers. "Would you like to apply for the position?"

"That was good." Lloyd grinned, mimicking the finger snap.

"Prestidigitation, my boy. Legerdemain. I do three shows a day and you're welcome to see one, if you would be so kind as to bring along your parents or guardians as paying customers. The Bible says blessed are they who pay in cash."

"No, it doesn't," Lloyd objected.

"Mine does," the showman replied, tipping his hat to a woman with a rustling bustle who shuffled by. "But never fear, the instance of instantaneous combustion you have just witnessed was a complimentary sample-gratis, without obligation; in other words, free of charge. Now, if you'll excuse me."

"You didn't say what happened to the monkey," Lloyd pointed out, reaching for the man's coat sleeve as he tried to turn away toward the tent.

"No," agreed the professor, wheeling back and chomping on his cigar. "I have neglected to fulfill your request for further intelligence and so have left you in a state of sustained bewonderment and speculation. And there you shall remain. I have work to do." Once again he made a move toward the tent pitched beside the wagon, nodding at a man with a thimble hat who ambled past with a frown of suspicion on his face.

"Is he dead?" Lloyd asked, refusing to budge.