"Not at all," the doc assures him. "There are some things I want to find out." He gives Sir Peter a chilly look with that, and that gent looks away hastily.
"Is that the city?" I ask, pointing. Sir Peter casts a pained eye at my extended finger. "Yes," he says. "What do you think of it?"
So I look again. Just a bunch of huts, of course. They're neat and clean, some of them bigger than you'd expect, but huts just the same. "Don't you believe in steel-frame construction?" I ask, and Sir Peter looks at me with downright horror. "Excuse me!" he nearly shouts and runs away from us—I said runs—and begins to talk with some of the others.
"I'm afraid," says the doc, "that you did it again, Matt."
"Gripes almighty—how do I know what'll offend them and what won't?
Am I a magician?" I complain.
"I guess you aren't," he says snappily. "Otherwise you'd watch your tongue. Now here comes Sir Peter again. You'd better not say anything at all this time."
The gent approaches, keeping a nervous eye on me, and says in one burst, "Please follow me to see the Old Man. And I hope you'll excuse him any errors he may make—he has a rather foul tongue. Senile, you know—older than the hills." So we follow him heel and toe to one of the largest of the cottages. Respectfully Sir Peter tapped on the door.
"Come in, ye bleedin' sturgeon!" thunders a voice.
"Tut!" says Sir Peter. "He's cursing again. You'd better go in alone—
good luck!" And in sheer blue terror he walks off, looking greatly relieved.
"Come in and be blowed, ye fish-faced octogenarian pack of truffle-snouted shovel-headed beagle-mice!" roars the voice.
Says the doc, "That means us." So he pushes open the door and walks in.
An old man with savage white whiskers stares us in the face. "Who the devil are you?" he bellows. "And where are my nitwit offspring gone?"
Without hedging the doc introduces himself: "I am Doctor Ellenbogan and this is Mr. Reilly. We have come from Earth, year 1941. You must be Lord Peter DeManning?"
The old man stares at him, breathing heavily. "I am," he says at last.
"And what the devil may you be doing in my world?"
"Fleeing from an assassin," says the doc. "And this is the assassin. We are here by accident, but I had expected a greater degree of courtesy than you seem to see fit to bestow on us. Will you explain, please?"
"And that goes double for me," I snap, feeling plenty tough.
"Pah!" grunts the old man. "Muscling in, that's what you're doing! Who invited you? This is my experiment and I'm not going to see it ruined by any blundering outsider. You a physicist?"
"Specializing in electronics," says the doc coldly.
"Thought so! Poppycock! I used a physicist to get me here—used him, mark you—for my own purposes. I'm a scientist myself. The only real scientist—the only real science there is!"
"And what might that be?" I ask.
"Humanity, you—assassin. The science of human relationships.
Conditioned reflexes from head to toe. Give me the child and I'll give you the man! I proved it—proved it here with my own brains and hands.
Make what you like of that. I won't tell you another word. Scientist—
physicist—pah!"
"He's nuts!" I whisper to the doc.
"Possibly. Possibly," he whispers back. "But I doubt it. And there are too many mysteries here." So he turns to the old man again. "Lord DeManning," he says smoothly, "there are things I want to find out."
"Well," snarls the old thing, "you won't from me. Now get out!" And he raises his hand—and in that hand is a huge Colt .45 automatic—the meanest hand weapon this side of perdition. I dive for the roscoe, but the doc turns on me quickly. "Cut it out, Matt," he hisses. "None of that.
Let's go outside and look around."
Once we are outside I complain, "Why didn't you let me plug him? He can't be that fast on the trigger. You practically need a crowbar to fire one of those things he had."
"Not that cunning old monster," broods the doc. "Not him. He knows a lot—probably has a hair-trigger on the gun. He's that kind of mind—I know the type. Academic run wild. Let's split up here and scout around." So he wanders off vaguely, polishing his glasses.
A passing figure attracts my eye. "Lady Cynthia!" I yell.
The incredibly beautiful blonde turns and looks at me coldly. "Mr.
Reilly," she says, "you were informed of my sentiments towards you. I hope you make no further attempts at—"
"Hold it!" I says. "Stop right then and there. What I want to know is what did I do that I shouldn't have done? Lady Cynthia, I—I like you an awful lot, and I don't think we should—" I'm studying her eyes like an eagle. The second I see them soften I know that I'm in.
"Mr. Reilly," she says with great agitation, "follow me. They'd kill me if they found out, but—" She walks off slowly, and I follow her into a hut.
"Now," she says, facing me fair and square, "I don't know why I should foul my mouth with things that I would rather die than utter, but there's something about you—" She brings herself to rights with a determined toss of her head. "What do you want to know?"
"First," I says, "tell me where you were coming back from this afternoon, or whatever it was."
She winces, actually winces, and turns red down to her neck, not with the pretty kind of pink blush that a dame can turn on and off, but with the real hot, red blush of shame that hurts like sunburn. Before answering she turns so she doesn't have to look at me. "It was a counter-raid," she says. "Against—" and here I feel actual nausea in her voice— "against the Whites." Defiantly she faces me again.
Bewildered I says, "Whites?" and she loses her temper. Almost hoarsely she cries, "Don't say that filthy name! Isn't it enough that you made me speak it?" And she hurries from the hut almost in a dead run.
But this time little Matt doesn't follow her. He's beginning to suspect that everybody's crazy except him or maybe vice versa.
Then there were sudden yells outside the hut, and Little Matt runs out to see what's up. And bedad if there aren't centipedes by the score pouring down on the little village! Centipedes mounted by men with weapons—axes, knives and bows. A passing woman yells at me, "Get to the walls—fight the bloody rotters! Kill them all!" She is small and pretty; the kind of gal that should never get angry. But her face was puffed with rage, and she was gnashing her small, even teeth.
As I see it the centipedes form a ring around the village, at full gallop like Indians attacking a wagon-train. And, like Indians, firing arrows into the thick of the crowd. So I take out the roscoe on account of the people on the centipedes are getting off and rushing the village.
I find myself engaged with a big, savage guy dreamin' homicidal visions in which I took a big part. He has a stone axe with a fine, sharp blade, and I have to fend it off as well as I can by dodging, inasmuch as if I tried to roll it off my shoulder or arm, like a prize-fighter would, I would find that I did not have any longer a shoulder or arm.
Little Matt gets in a clean one to the jaw, nearly breaking his hand, and works the guy around to one of the huts, through other knots of fighting men. Then the big guy lands one with the handle of the axe on my left forearm, nearly paralyzing it. And to my great surprise he says, "Take that, you rotten Black!"
Not wishing to argue I keeps on playing with him until he is ready to split my skull with one blow. At which point I dodge, and the axe is stuck firm in the side of the hut. Taking my time to aim it, I crack his skull open with the roscoe's butt and procede to my next encounter.
This gent I trip up with the old soji as taught in the New York Police Department and elsewhere, and while he is lying there I kick him in the right place on the side of his head, which causes him to lose interest.
"Matt! For God's sake!" yells someone. It is Doc Ellenbogan, seriously involved with two persons, both using clubs with more enthusiasm than skill. I pick up a rock from the ground and demonstrate in rapid succession just what you can do with a blunt instrument once you learn how. There's a certain spot behind the ear