Rogue Princess

Chapter 6

WERNER von Wittelsbach, left arm behind his back, advanced upon Claude Godwin with wide-spread legs, swinging his Schlaeger at Godwin's head as if he were cutting sugar-cane. Godwin, who had learned saber-fencing for the part of the noble Confederate officer in The Last Plantation, had no trouble in parrying, especially as von Wittelsbach was almost as drunk as he. But crude as the methods of Schlaeger fencing seemed, Godwin realized that his opponent would wear him down in time by superior strength of arm and wrist.

Godwin threw back a few strokes without effect and tried to use footwork, but was hampered by Malling. As he dragged at Malling's arm, the detective, aroused by the clang of blades, lurched to his feet.

"Hey!" cried Malling "Nej, i Gronland bliver ... In Greenland is dat forbidden! Stop, at vunce!"

Otto Malling staggered forward, his hands groping the air, just as von Wittelsbach aimed a terrific cut at Godwin. Malling thrust his head in the way so that the long blade came down upon his skull with a short dull sound. He fell to hands and knees, blood running from a two-inch gash in his scalp, and collapsed on the moss.

As he did so, Godwin decided that this medieval farce had gone far enough. He stepped forward and kicked von Wittelsbach in his most vulnerable parts. As the German doubled over, Godwin brought the pommel of his Schlaeger down on his head. Werner von Wittelsbach fell across the body of the detective.

Godwin stuck the point of his saber into the ground so that the blade remained upright and bent to examine the recumbent forms. Both were alive if unconscious, and Malling's wound did not appear serious. Then Godwin examined the hand-grip of the handcuff which Malling still held.

Malling's right hand was secured to the grip by a shaped guard that passed over his knuckles. This guard was hinged at one end and latched at the other, and fitted the back of Malling's hand so closely that while it was in place there was no chance of his losing his grip accidentally. However, the latch that held the guard in the closed position was not locked, and a little manipulation enabled Godwin to open it and remove the grip from Malling's hand.

He had got this far when a suppressed feminine cry made him whirl. There stood Karen Hauch and Karl Bruun. The latter exclaimed, "What is this? Are they dead?"

"No." Godwin explained.

Karl Bruun said, "So you are free? Good! You wish to come with us, do you not?"

"Where to?"

"My father and I are making a break for freedom, together with Karen and the king. We heard the swords and came to see ..."

"Say no more; lead on!"

Karl Bruun led the way along the winding paths until he was almost out of sight of the palace. They approached a large helicopter. When they reached the machine Godwin saw that half the capacious cabin was taken up by the parachron. He said, "Taking the gadget?"

"Yes. My father has always wished—where is he?"

Karl Bruun began hunting around, but no trace of the Elder Bruun did he find.

"Bevare!" he said. "I told him not to be wandering off—"

They stood uncertainly for a few minutes. Bruun said, "I do not dare go off to hunt, because then if he returned I should be missing. As I was saying, we hope to get the machine to a country where we shall be allowed to use it for scientifical purposes and not this absurd dynastic business ... I hope he gets back before the police discover Malling and Wittelsbach, or learn that we took the parachron off the roof of the laboratory building."

"This the machine you herd whales in?"

"Yes. We shall not be allowed to keep it, but if it can get us to Canada that is all we ask. Ah, here he is!"

Viggo Bruun appeared, snapped: "Jag fand ham ikke; nu skal vi gaa," and boosted Karen Hauch into the helicopter.

UNCOUNTED hours later Claude Godwin yawned himself awake.

Despite the excitement of escape he had fallen asleep almost as soon as they had taken off. Now he looked around, stiff from sleeping sitting and overhung from strong drink. The sun was up, but that meant little in these latitudes. His watch told him that he had been asleep something over ten hours; in fact it was about time for breakfast.

Karen was sitting by Viggo Bruun, who twiddled the dials of the radar set while Karl Bruun piloted. They were all talking Danish, but switched to English when they became aware that Godwin was awake.

Viggo Bruun said: "That should be the Naskaupi River ahead. I hope, Karl, that your inspiration of cutting inland will not land us in prison for breaking the Canadian flying-regulations."

"If we had gone straight for Gander anybody who followed us could have picked us up," said Karl Bruun.

"Speaking of which, here is a pip! Somebody is behind us," said Viggo Bruun.

In a matter of minutes Godwin, peering past the parachron through one of the rear windows, saw a speck against the piled clouds. The speck swiftly grew to an airplane which swelled and flashed by overhead with an explosive shriek and roar, and dwindled to a speck again as It banked for a long turn.

"Thomsen's machine!" cried Karl Bruun.

"That would be Wittelsbach piloting," said the elder Bruun. "Here he comes again."

The airplane, having slowed to a mere 200 k. p. h., came back. Again it skimmed overhead, barely missing the helicopter. Godwin, forgetting his aching head, flinched as it passed.

The Bruuns were excitedly talking Danish again. Karen Hauch said, "He wishes us to alight. See, he is putting down his wheels to break our rotors if we do not."

The helicopter sank towards the bleak Labrador landscape, where the coastal tundra began to give place to forest. As the country was mostly open at this point there was no trouble in finding a landing-place. They had hardly touched their wheels to the moss when the airplane (a sportsman's version of a fast single-jet police craft, without armament) alighted too, its flaps and slots extended, and taxied up beside the helicopter. The canopy flew open and von Wittelsbach and Thomsen scrambled out. The former ran over to the helicopter, waving a pistol.

"Get out!" he shouted. "Keep the bands up!"

WHEN THE four people in the helicopter had complied, Thomsen waddled past them with a hatchet in his hand. He climbed into the helicopter, whence presently came smashing sounds.

"Hey!" cried Godwin. "He's busting up the parachron!"

Von Wittelsbach said nothing but swung his gun to cover Godwin, who glanced around, expecting to see signs of strong emotion on the faces of the Bruuns. Instead they took the destruction of their life's work impassively.

"What's this all about?" said Godwin.

Viggo Bruun said: "It is all right; there are complete plans—"

"Were," said von Wittelsbach. "We got them out of Gram's private safe-deposit box and burned them. Now shut up."

A mosquito sank its probe into Godwin's cheek, but he did not dare slap it for fear von Wittelsbach might mistake the move and shoot. The smashing sounds ceased and Thor Thomsen climbed out of the helicopter, saying, "God. Skylte dem op."

The sentence sounded enough like "Good; shoot them up," so that Godwin guessed the meaning, a guess confirmed when von Wittelsbach raised the pistol and aimed at Viggo Bruun.

"Hey!" yelled Godwin. "Thomsen! You can't trust that creep; he tried to poison me when you only wanted him to take a message—"

There was a metallic sound behind him, followed by the roar of a shot. Godwin, craning his neck, saw that the door of the luggage compartment of the helicopter, below the passenger compartment, was hanging open, and that on hands and knees in the cavity with a pistol in his hand crouched Edward III, King of Greenland. When Godwin turned back, von Wittelsbach lay supine with a huge hole in his chest through which fragments of bone and lung could be distinguished amidst the general gore. Thomsen was slowly raising his hands.

"Well, well," said the king. "So they were right when they said you had hired the man who killed that witness in the case of the Aarestrup fraud! And fearing lest the Bruuns with their machine should track down the whole story, you chased us to destroy the parachron and all the witnesses. What a bloodthirsty little man!"

Though he did not know about the Aarestrup fraud, Godwin followed the general drift of the accusation. He said, "Say, your Majesty, isn't it too bad you couldn't have shot him before Thomsen busted the machine? Now it's gone for good ..."

"Not quite," said Viggo Bruun. "I feared some such attempt, so I made a duplicate set of plans, addressed them to the British Government, and had Karl drop them on the deck of a British ship on one of his whale-herding flights."

"Oh," said King Edvard. "Then all is not lost. When I got to the helicopter I found nobody—Dr. Bruun must have gone off to search for me—so I hid in that compartment lest the police find me."

"It is better than that," said Viggo Bruun. "Sir Keith passed on a confidential message to me that the British had built a machine and tried it out. The first thing they discovered was that Harold Haroldson had no legitimate heirs, though plenty of the other kind. The picture Gram was using to advance Mr. Godwin's claim was partly a fake, using modern actors dressed up like eleventh century Anglo-Saxons. I knew that all along, but did not dare say so. They also found that legitimacy is no good, anyway, because every few generations you find that the putative heir to the throne is not the son of the king, but of some lover of the queen. So all that foolishness will soon be ended."

A MONTH later, having testified in the Canadian court that sentenced Thor Thomsen, Claude Godwin returned to Hollywood. Despite frantic long-distance conferences the studio had not been able to hold off on the shooting of Scaramouche, but had gone ahead with Ricardo Pergolesi in the title-role. However, as Godwin's contract had four months to run, they gave him the lead in Carson of Venus, Only, as the real Venus had been visited and found not to resemble that imagined by Burroughs in any particular, the setting of the story had been moved to a suppositious planet of Procyon and the title changed to Swords Across the Void. The studio had also found the Burroughs plot too corny for their purposes and had entirely re-written it until nothing was left of the original—not even the names of the characters.

Godwin sat in his bungalow telling his adventures to his friend Westbrook Wolff: "...and now Viggo Bruun is at Cal Tech finishing a new parachron, and he's promised me a job as technician when my contract runs out. I may never be a real scientist, but I can twiddle knobs and hold a soldering-iron ..."

"How about our red-haired sun-bather?"

"Back at U. C. C; her old man took a house in Glendale, and thinks I'm Santa Claus because I got him a bit-part in The Spider of Moscow. Anker Gram stood on his head trying to get us all back to Greenland so he wouldn't have to pay me damages for kidnapping me, but they wouldn't go. That reminds me—-" Godwin picked up the telephone and dialed. "Karen? Claude. Ja like to see the premiere of Amazon Gold tomorrow night?... Okay, I'll pick you up at twenty-hundred. See ya."

As Godwin hung up, Wolff looked at him with an amused expression, saying, "Don't tell me that after all the fighting and running you did to avoid marrying the dame you're going to do it anyway!"

"Not at all. I am dating Miss Hauch in the normal manner, and if on further acquaintance we decide we're made for each other and etcetera, who knows? Or again we may not. But nobody's gonna pressure us into it!"

The End