It was lit very softly. Also, it seemed very crowded. A small room to start with, it had so many cups and statuettes and antique guns and other junk crammed into it that there hardly seemed room enough to move around.
I noticed a fencing foil hanging on the wall opposite me. The wall was very dusty, and there was the outline of another saber which must have crossed it but had been recently removed. I wondered idly why it had been taken down.
Then I stopped wondering. I saw the missing saber. It was sticking straight up from the chest of a man lying on the couch.
A mackerel couldn’t have been any deader than he was.
All the same, I crossed over to make sure. I pulled the blade out of his chest and bent over automatically, but without hope, to listen for a heartbeat. What I heard was a loud scream.
I whirled around, still holding the bloody saber by the hilt. Ingrid was standing just inside the curtain. She screamed again. Then she managed to come up with some words. “It’s you!” she said. “First you killed George, and now Knute!” Then she screamed the third time.
“Knute?” I was having a rough time catching up with the rest of the class. “You mean this is Knute Hajstrom?”
She nodded mindlessly. Then she turned her scream into the age-old cry. “Help! Murder! Police!”
Police! All I could think of was how mad Putnam was going to be!
chapter SIX
“En garde!”
“Hey, run that reel again, will you?” I requested of my brain. My brain obliged. In slow motion.
First there was Ingrid screaming and the corpse behind me on the couch. Then there was the rustle from behind the couch as the figure popped up to grab the second fencing foil from the wall. Then there was Ingrid high-tailing it into the other room as the sword-wielding figure lunged for me.
“En garde!” he said.
“Got it now?" my brain wanted to know. “Got it!” I assured my brain. “En garde.” I echoed aloud, blocking the lunge with my own foil. For a moment, my adversary and I were locked together, blade to blade, staring into each others faces.
Oh, no! It was that mirror again. My fellow duelist was the crud with my face!
“Haven’t I seen this movie before?” I asked my brain. “Shut up and keep dueling,” my brain replied. “Douglas Fairbanks, wasn’t it?” I persisted. “Senior, or Junior, I’m not sure which. Or maybe it was Louis Hayward, or Ronald Colman. Zenda? One of the Dumas things?” My brain grew grumpy. “You can write Archer Winsten11 and ask him—if you live!” it told me nastily. “Touche!” I said aloud as my foe neatly sliced off my necktie.
“My compliments. You duel very well,” my double saluted me.
“I took a merit badge in fencing when I was a Boy Scout,” I told him truthfully. “I guess you never forget.”
He cocked an ear toward the babble of voices approaching from the other side of the curtain. “They’re bound to interrupt our duel, so I must kill you quickly, fool!” he said, rhyming. “Thrust home!” His blade lunged for my throat.
My throat lunged out of its way. So quickly, indeed, that I sprained my Adam’s Apple executing the maneuver. “Ha! You missed, play actor!” I taunted him.
“We shall meet again!” he assured me, diving out the window as the crowd poured into the room.
“Sooner than you think, play actor,” I retorted, following on his heels.
I half expected to land in a moat, but I didn’t. We were on the ground floor, and what I landed in was a garbage pail. I jumped free of it and chased my double up the alley. It was a dead end. He turned, and we resumed our duel under the stars. A couple of alley cats watched without too much interest.
Thrust and counter-thrust; our blades danced an intricate ballet to the click-clack and pang-ping sounds of steel on steel. Sword-point twirled delicately about sword-point in the tickling movements of Death seeking an opening. Like acrobats we bounced and parried back up the alley to the street, down the street to the next alley, and through it to the next, and then the next.
Finally we stood fast in an alleyway between two old law tenements, barely habitable relics which had somehow been overlooked when the other dwellings had been torn down to make way for the buildings of commerce. A light sprang up behind a fire escape running up the wall of one of the buildings. It was like a movie projector casting our shadows—giant shadows-—over white sheets hanging from a clothesline strung between the tenements. More lights dotted the scene, and an audience gathered to watch the enlarged shadow-duel.
My adversary hummed something Rudolph Friml-y12 , and our foils clanged together in an intricate duet to pick up the beat. We held the note of the final chorus with the blades locked together, our knuckles almost grazing, teeth flashing white in the mirror image of each other’s faces. “Well done, play actor,” I complimented him.
“And I salute you,” he replied.
We broke the impasse. Each fell back a step, and then resumed fencing.
“What’s goin’ on?” a voice inquired from one of the windows above us.
“Some kinda rumble, I think,” another voice answered.
“Ain’t it awful, the violence in the streets today? "
“They ain’t in the street; they’re in the alley.”
“Man, aren’t those the longest switchblades you ever saw?"
My foe executed a quick entrechat, landed sideways, and lunged for me. I was too quick for him. I slipped under his blade, and my sword-point was a flash of lightning striking the hilt of his weapon. It went spinning from his grip to the pavement. He dived for it, but he was too late. My foot pinned the blade to the ground, and my sword was at his throat, warning him away from it. He backed off, spreading his hands in a gesture of futility. I flicked my rapier and sent his foil flying through the air toward him, hilt-first. He caught it and bowed to acknowledge my chivalry.
“You are a true sportsman, sir.” He paid tribute to my gallantry.
“I’m just a nice guy,” I replied.
“But nice guys,” he reminded me, “finish last!”
He punctuated the remark with a furious assault that backed me to the wall. I was forced to leap to the top of a garbage pail to avoid the frenzied stabbing of his blade. It whistled under my heels as I jumped.
“Five bucks says the guy with half a necktie loses.”
“What odds?”
“No odds. They’re an even match."
“Yeah, they’re an even hatch.”
“Now that ya mention it, there is a decided resemblance.”
“Any takers?”
“Okay. I’ll take five.”
We were on the first-floor fire escape now. I was using the lid from a garbage pail to ward off my adversary’s bloodthirsty blade. An intricate Graustarkian13 rhythm echoed between the buildings as his flailing sword ricocheted off my tin shield. His mouth was half cavalier smile, half snarl as he closed in on me.
“What did you do to Hortense?” I inquired as I fended him off.
“Nothing she didn’t enjoy,” he assured me as he feinted for my belly and then thrust for my throat.
“You fiend!” I defended myself with the garbage-can lid
“Not at all. The damsel was flattered at your interest in her.” He grabbed for my shield and we grappled for it.
“My interest?”
“Yes. Naturally Milady14 thought that I was you.”
“What a heinous deception!”
“Nonsense! Believe me, you outdid yourself with her.”
“You go too far!” My blade lunged for his grin, but he danced back out of range. .
“You should be grateful to me. I’ve enhanced your reputation tremendously.” His free hand was tugging at my shield again.