"Not very well."
"Too far, eh? Patroons tried to run the blockade, no doubt." The well-dressed man sat down on the top of another pile."Lovely day, what?" He smiled all over.
"Yep," replied Nash."You look pretty well pleased with the world."
"Am. Just collected my fee for solving the case of the Methodist molar. Re-enactment worked like a charm. Now I can loaf for a year. I say!" The man looked sharply at Nash."Aren't you the chap who so sprightly skewered that vagrant on Chelsea Hill last night?"
Prosper Nash began to shake slightly. He pulled himself up and barked with quite unnecessary aggressiveness: "What gave you that idea?"
"Heh, heh. Elementary, my dear chap. Only had to examine the holes in his shirt to know he'd been done in by a stop thrust from a seventeenth-century rapier, delivered by a man of your height. Won't bore you with the details."
"Are you going to turn me in?" asked Nash more quietly.
"Oh, my Aunt Emmy! To use your own truculent phraseology, what gave you that idea? Not a policeman. Private investigator. They wouldn't be interested, either, with Arries popping out of their teacups. Served the chap right, no doubt."
Nash drew a long breath."It did, all right, all right. Say, m'sieur, I recently heard a man say something about a desert island. Do they have such a thing around New York?"
"Certainly. Where the Shamir's kept." The private investigator waved in a northeasterly direction."Park. Risky to go see, though; been fighting there."
"There seems to be a gosh-awful lot of fighting," commented Nash.
The private investigator shrugged."True; almost makes one believe that legend about our being the idealizations of chaps on another plane. Naturally chaps would imagine a lot of fierce-quarrelsome idealizations."
"What's that?" cried Nash. A few feet from the men a hazy, flickering outline wavered in the air, gradually thickening and becoming more opaque. Nash repeated his question: "What is it?"
"The mystery of creation, my friend," replied the other, puffing unconcernedly.
The presence solidified slowly into a handsome, well-built woman of about Nash's age—or rather, about the age of the Chevalier de Nêche—clad in a severe businesswoman's suit.
The woman stared vacantly for some seconds. She passed her hand across her eyes and took a couple of faltering steps, as if just awakened.
"Sit down, my dear," the investigator addressed her.
She seemed to see them for the first time; an expression of fear and bewilderment appeared.
"Sit down," the man repeated.
She did so, uncertainly, as though she did not quite know how to control her limbs.
"Can I help you?" asked Nash.
She looked at him as though she did not understand him, then slowly articulated: "I—don't— know."
"Give her a few minutes to get adjusted, old chap," said the investigator, and addressed the woman: "Have much trouble coming through?"
"Three—times. It—was—very—painful."
"I know, old girl; it's that way with most of us. Don't be afraid of us; we're pukka. I'm Reggie Kramer, and this chap—"
"Chevalier de Nêche," said Nash, feeling a little silly about the title.
"Righto. Know your name yet?"
The woman closed her eyes, and finally said: "Eleanor Thompson Berry. I lecture."
There was a long silence before she added: "I also write a newspaper column. Are there newspapers?"
"Not many, since the Aryans burned down the World. But the best thing for you would be to toddle over to the City Hall. The Home Defense forces need propagandists."
"Where is that?" asked Miss Berry.
Kramer gestured and poured out directions, at which the woman looked all the more bewildered."I... I don't know my way around yet," she said, and looked appealingly at the two men.
"I'll show you," growled Nash, "though I'm not much better off than you are." He looked scornfully at Kramer.
The private investigator merely laughed."Good idea, old man. I'd offer to conduct Miss Berry if I weren't so infernally lazy. You might take these with you." He whisked out a couple of cards. Nash took one and read:
REGINALD VANCE KRAMER
Discreet Investigations
224 Greene Street New York City
Nash meant to give Kramer a curt good-by, but he had swept off his plumed hat in a wide gesture before he knew it. Wherever the chevalier's soul might be, his body still had a lot of automatic reflexes left over.
Nash and Eleanor Thompson Berry turned away and walked toward the nearest street leading away from the water front. Then they halted.
A clatter of hoofs preceded a group of six horsemen in steel caps and long white mantles, who rode straight at the pair. They had bearded, mahogany-colored faces, and looked enough alike to be sextuplets.
They reined in a few paces from the pair; one cried something in a guttural language, and two of them flung themselves off their horses and ran at the woman, who stepped back in alarm.
"Hey!" cried Nash.
The leader looked down at him dispassionately, and jerked a thumb. He said: "Get hence, youse!"
Miss Berry screamed "Help!" as the two dismounted ones seized her arms. The chevalier's arm had already half drawn its sword. Nash lunged at the nearest kidnaper; the blade bent against a shirt of mail, and then scimitars flashed out all around him.
Chapter IV.
Nash parried a cut with a ringing clash, and then one of the riderless horses caught his eye. He bounded toward it with the idea of vaulting into the saddle. But mounting a horse is a task requiring both hands, and Nash was encumbered by his rapier. For a few seconds he clutched the pommel with his left and hopped around trying to spear the nigh stirrup with his toe. The horse pranced in a circle, and the dark men yelled and took wild swipes at Nash.
At last he thought to put the blade between his teeth and catch the cantle with his other hand. One heave and he was up; he had not found the stirrups, but the chevalier's fine riding muscles made them hardly necessary. He put the animal -in motion toward the nearest opponent; the man gave ground and the others closed in on him from back and side. The tip of a saber swished by an inch from his nose; another nicked his boot. He felt as a toad must feel that sees the whirling blades of a lawn mower slicing down on him.
A guttural command opened the press out; the leader of the pack was leveling a pistol at him. He could see that the barrel was squarely in line with his midriff.
A gun crashed. Nash, tensing himself for the hammer blow of the bullet, felt nothing—had he been killed instantly? —and then realized that the man with the pistol had been shot instead of shooting, for he swayed and fell out of his saddle.
There were more shots; the kidnapers yelled, and Nash, finding himself within easy reach of one, carefully ran him through the throat. When he looked around for another to tackle, three were riding off as if the devil were after them, and the remaining one, afoot, was being pursued by Eleanor Thompson Berry, who had somehow possessed herself of his scimitar and was swinging it at his steel-capped head with both hands.
The columnist gave up the hopeless chase and walked back, breathing hard. Nash saw a small group of men standing in front of a water-front shack with rifles and pistols. He rode over to them, finding them a tough-looking lot, and extremely nautical. One with salt-flecked sideburns said: "Ahoy, mister. Thought you was going to get your thwarts stove for a minute."
"Thanks. I needed help, all right."
"Wasn't nothin'; the boys and me didn't figure on letting them sharks take a Christian."