Solomon's Stone

Chapter XIV.

"HALT! WER DA?" The command rang out in a peculiarly tense, high bark, as if the speaker had screwed himself up to such a nervous pitch that he was on the verge of exploding. But this was, as Nash came to learn, merely the ordinary tone used by Aryans on military duty. This particular Aryan, a cross-gartered barbarian with his hair in long yellow braids, was covering them with a rifle aimed from the hip.

Nash responded: "Just us," and did some quick thinking. When they had been stopped by a squad of Roman legionnaires, Muzio Sforza d'Amelio had talked them loose with a swift hand-Waving patter of Italian. That might not work so well with this pseudo-Alaric.

As they advanced into the small circle of light around the sentry, the latter snapped: "Shpeak Aryan, sub-man!"

"I only know about ten words—" apologized Nash.

"You know da regulation. All sub-men must learn Aryan in vun veek or be executed. Vot are dese! Who gave you permission to lead dancherous animals around da streets?"

D'Amelio's hands began to flutter in a way that Nash had learned to interpret as a warming up for articulate speech. The condottiere said: "Theesa poor littla pussy cat anda monk', your high command order' for their blood. We take them."

"Blood? Explain, or you vill be executed."

"Yessa, blood. You know the Aryans have sucha wonderful blood, better than other people? They are going to giva you transfusions from theesa littla animals, to make you stronga like them."

"O-o-oh! Vy didn't you say so? Vot are you vaiting around for? On your vay! Hurry! And don't let dose animals loose, or you vill be executed!"

They walked on through the cemeterial streets for a couple more silent blocks before being challenged again. This time there were three Aryans: a commander in the chain mail and white blackcrossed surcoat of a Teutonic knight, flanked by a pair of horned Siegfrieds.

D'Amelio went through his spiel about the high command's plan for improving the blood of the super-race. The result was different.

"Hm-m-m," said the knight, "let me see." He leaned forward to scrutinize the beasts. The saber-tooth may have taken a dislike to the Aryan's smell, for Smiley laid his ears back and snarled with a sound like the crackle of a high-voltage arc.

The knight retreated a hasty step."You had better keep them under control, sub-men!" barked the paladin."If I had been so much as scratched, you would have been executed! Now I see that one is a mythical African ape, a kulukamba, and the other an extinct American carnivore, Smilodon californicus. You cannot fool the German culture! These are not Aryan animals. The first is from the Negro continent, and the second from the Jewish continent, America. You think our leaders would inject us with the blood of Negroid and Jewish animals? Fools, you will be executed anyway. Seize them!"

"Who, us?" said the Siegfrieds in rather small voices.

"Ja! Sie!"

Nash did not want to sic his beasts on the warriors at this stage if it could be avoided. While the subordinates tensed themselves to spring, and d'Amelio's free hand stole to his hilt, Alicia's clear voice blasted the night: "You lousy stinking obscenity swine, if you touch us I'll Aryanize you all right! I'll—"

"Madame!" cried the knight, angry but somehow less truculent."You must not! Such language is forbidden by the regulations!"

Then Nash remembered: "Step on their toes until they apologize!"

"Ha-ha!" he shouted in a nasty, mirthless laugh."Talk of executing me! Expect me to commit suicide?"

"What do you mean?" gasped the knight.

"I," announced Nash in the tense, pharyngeal tones of an aroused Aryan, "am Ritter Johann Glück von Nasch, the new executioner!"

"Guk," said the knight."But... but where is your ax?"

"What do you think these are?" Nash pointed to his beasts.

"O-o-oh! Ich verstehe! Aber, warum sprechen sie Englisch?"

Nash's heart skipped a beat before he got the answer to that one too: "Because that's the only language these animals understand. Now will you go about your proper duties, or must I report you?"

The Teutonic knight at this point exhibited a marked lack of enthusiasm for Nash's company. He murmured apologies, bowed from the hips, saluted, and clanked off. When the darkness swallowed him and his cohorts, Nash and his assistants heard the Aryan trio break into a run.

D'Amelio laughed."You are gooda, Chevalier. Thosa poor little supermen, I am sorry for them!"

"Give the credit to Miss Woodson's lack of inhibitions," said Nash, quickening his pace."In a while it'll occur to them to go round to headquarters to ask if there really is a new executioner, and then Manhattan'll be too hot for us."

"It's not what you'd call frigid now," added Alicia.

Central Park was so dark under the starless sky that it took them half an hour of bush-beating to find the lake.

"More Aryansa," whispered d'Amelio.

Nash peered out from behind a tree, and made out men scattered along the shore."Seems to be a cordon of 'em clear around the lake," he murmured."Guess we'd better go around to where Shapiro's boathouse is."

They wended their slow way. The beasts became difficult: Kulu wanted to climb trees, and Smiley sniffed and tugged at the scent of squirrels and other small game. Once the latter got his chain tangled in a bush, and while Nash was unsnarling it the big cat slipped away on his belly.

Nash called: "Ab—ac—lie down, Smiley! Alicia, what do you—"

"Accumbe!" cried the girl. After some hunting they found Smiley crouched under the shrubbery; he whined with displeasure when Nash hauled on his chain, but came.

They found the path leading to the boathouse and walked boldly down it. At the first challenge, Nash barked that he was von Nasch, the new executioner—

"Ho, ho! Otto, hierher!" There was a stir; more shadowy forms with winged and horned iron hats drifted up."Der Kerl behaupt, das er der neuer Henker ist!"

"Vunderful," rumbled a voice."A fine shtory. De only flaw is dat I da new executioner been!" Nash saw that the speaker was a stocky man who leaned on a huge ax, and had his other arm around the neck of another Aryan who punctuated his sentences with a girlish giggle."Doch, I make you apprentice. I give you vun lesson, very short, very sharp. It is too bad you vill not be able to take more—"

The Aryans gathered around them like a wave about to break. Nash heard the jingle as d'Amelio dropped the ape's chain, and the wheep of emerging sword and dagger. He released the saber-tooth."Smiley! Kulu! Carpe! Carpe!"

The kulukamba gave a short, piercing scream; the cat roared; a gun crashed somewhere and lit up the scene for a blink. Nash drove his rapier through Otto's chest while the latter was still starting to swing his ponderous ax. He almost stuck another figure before he realized that it was Alicia, hacking away with an Aryan sword.

The confusion opened out; the three non-Aryans found themselves alone with a few stiffs. More guns banged, and the shouts, roars, and screams faded into the distance.

One rowboat stood on the boathouse apron; they tumbled into it and pushed off."You row, d'Amelio," said Nash.

"Butta, signor, a littla weaka man like me—"

"Row, damn it! I've got to work this watch."

The condottiere put his massive shoulders into it, and the boat whizzed through the ripples. Nash directed it toward the desert island.

"It's beginning to get light," said Alicia.

"Gosh! Have we been all night? We'll have a swell chance of getting away in daytime."

"Maybe somebody'll hide us," suggested Alicia, not too hopefully.

"Maybe. More on your right, d'Amelio."

Nash was not sure that they had entered the smooth strip that marked the intersection of Tukiphat's hollow sphere of refraction and the surface of the lake, until the surroundings were suddenly and swiftly stretched out of all recognizable shape. D'Amelio dropped his oars and crossed himself.

"Keep on," Nash ordered him, and pressed the stud on the side of the stop watch. At once the environment returned, if not to normal, at least to a recognizable distortion thereof. Tukiphat's island was visible as if seen through a concave lens. A few more strokes carried them through the refractory zone altogether, and another half-minute's rowing to the island itself.

The keel grated softly against the sand, and before the boat had stopped, Alicia had jumped out into inch-deep water and was pulling on the painter. D'Amelio scrambled after, and then Nash.

The last whispered: "He's supposed to be contemplating his navel beside the entrance to his cave. That's around the hill. Damn it, d'Amelio, stop that jingling!"

They padded noiselessly over the sand. A dark spot came into view on the side of the knoll, and beside it could be discerned an amorphous gray shape the size of a seated man.

A sound that to Nash's excited imagination resembled the explosion of a string of firecrackers, made him jump, till he realized that it was the slight crackle of Alicia's sheet of typewriter paper.

"Light the candle," breathed Nash.

"Can't; I haven't enough hands. You'll have to."

Nash fumbled and dropped his match, and had to comb the sand with his fingers for it. The shapeless figure was as still as a headstone, which it slightly resembled.

Nash struck a light and sought the candle wick.

The surroundings seemed suddenly much darker."Ouch!" said Alicia, quite audibly."What?" said Nash."Damned wax burned me—"

"Sh! He's coming to!"

In the microcosmic candle light, the gray thing was stirring. A head emerged from the top of the bundle: high forehead, fiercely aquiline nose, in a lean, old, but firm-skinned face; the whole utterly devoid of hair.

The black gimlet eyes threw back tiny reflections of the candle flame, and the whole bundle stirred. A bare arm thrust itself out of the voluminous gray mantle, and the being started to heave itself to its feet. A voice, deep and clear, boomed out: "Damned impertinence—"

Alicia flapped her paper sharply to flatten it out, and cried: "Tukiphat, I command and abjure thee, be thou still in the name of Metraton! Genius of the Shamir, be thou fixed by Mizkun and Nikita! By the fiery serpents of the caduceus, be thou rendered immobile, in the holy names Trinitas, Sother, Messias, Emmanuel, Sabahot, Adonai, Athenatos, and Pentagna! I order thee to remain rigid by Tetragram and Tetragrammaton—"

The cloaked figure creaked to a stop. Its toga slipped from its shoulders and fell in a heap around its feet, leaving it fixed in an awkward semi-erect position, like a bald discobolus without his discus. Nash saw that Tukiphat wore on a chain around his neck a many-faceted stone the size of a hard baseball.

Nash and d'Amelio went into action like a pair of surgeons racing against peritonitis. The former yanked the gem off over Tukiphat's head; the latter whipped the rope around and around, binding wrist and ankle and crossing the ends against the chest of the genius.

Tukiphat blinked and shuddered as a big gob of sealing wax scorched his hide. As he started to come out of the fixation spell, Nash pressed the seal against the wax. The genius twiddled his fingers and squirmed a little, but seemed unable to do anything practical toward ridding himself of the rope.

"Fools!" he roared."Release me! That loot will do you no good. You cannot escape me —"

But the three criminals were hurrying back to their boat. Alicia put the candle out, as it was now light enough to see their way without it. They passed another, smaller rowboat—the same one that had been there when Nash had made his abortive attempt to raid the island—no doubt Tukiphat's own boat.

D'Amelio broke into a brief run. Before he reached the large rowboat, he turned and drew his weapons: a sword and a broad, foot-long dagger with a massive guard.

"I amma so sorry!" he remarked amiably, "but I mus' aska you to giva me da jewel—"

"Oh, yeah?" snarled Nash. He had been subconsciously expecting something of the sort. Almost before he knew it he was boring in.

D'Amelio's sword was a pre-rapier, with a cut-and-thrust blade much heavier than his opponent's. Nash had little trouble getting past this slow crowbar, but the condottiere did not seem to mind. He did most of his parrying with the big dagger anyway. As Nash finished one lunge, D'Amelio snaked his left hand out and hooked a projection of the guard of his dagger into the guard of Nash's sword. Nash could not recover, and d'Amelio sent a lethal thrust straight at his chest.

Nash felt a blow like that of a fist against his breastbone; it almost tore his grip on his hilt loose, but did not penetrate. D'Amelio tried again, and again his point stopped and his blade bowed in compression.

D'Amelio's eyes widened."You are invulnerab'! No fair!"

Nash snorted with truculent relief. He put his foot against d'Amelio's body, took his hilt in both hands, and tore the dagger out of the condottiere's grasp. Then he lunged—but into thin air; d'Amelio danced back out of range. A sound made him turn. Alicia Woodson was ankle-deep in the water, wading purposefully ashore with one of the oars in her hands.

D'Amelio ran back some more to avoid being flanked. As Nash followed, he cried: "Waita, my friend! Looka!" His left hand went into his trunk hose and came out with a small shiny object : Nash's magical watch.

"Where'd you get that?" said Nash.

"I picka your pock'!" The swarthy face grinned with high good humor."Now, you gotta da jewel, I gotta da watcha. Let'sa be friends, splitta da dough fifty-fifty. Otherwise I throw da watch in da drink!"

"Won't work. Not going to sell it. Gimme!" Nash advanced; d'Amelio would hardly throw away their only means of escaping Tukiphat's vengeance—

But Muzio Sforza d'Amelio did just that. A small black blob arched high against the breaking clouds and disappeared with a plunk.

"You damned idiot!" yelled Nash, starting for the mercenary. The big man whirled and fled again, light as a ballet dancer."You thinka you catcha me? Ha ha!"

"Prosper!" called Alicia."Quick!"

She had the oars in the locks and the boat ready to shove off.

"The watch—" objected Nash.

"I know! Hurry, before water gets into the works!"

There seemed to be no percentage in chasing the elusive Italian, so Nash took to the rowboat."Hope you know what you're doing, Alicia."

"Of course I do! Look behind you. The watch fell into the refractory zone, so now there isn't any refractory zone!"

Nash took a quick glance."Gosh, that's so!"

"But," she continued, "when water works into the gear wheels the watch will stop, and the refractory zone will be right back where it was!"

Nash only half paid attention, for he was pulling with all his might. Behind Alicia in the stern appeared Muzio Sforza, rowing Tukiphat's small rowboat.

"That man," panted Nash, "is hard to discourage."

They entered the area of optical distortion that marked the partly neutralized refractory sphere. The pursuing boat at once looked much farther off, but it gained rapidly.

"Chevalier!" called d'Amelio over his shoulder."You are a man of honor, yes? Then you will notta risk your beautiful lady by a naval battla, yes?"

Alicia said: "Give me your sword, Prosper, and when he gets close enough—"

"Not—necessary," grunted Nash. They were almost out of the zone. They crossed the line—and three seconds later the zone reappeared in full force.

Nash rested on his oars for a few seconds."Guess the watch stopped, all right, all right. Look at the poor guy, Alicia!"

A few feet away, Muzio Sforza d'Amelio bobbed up and down on the smooth dull surface of the refractory strip. He and his boat were there and as large as life, but they seemed to have lost all depth—except for their motion, they looked just like a big cardboard cutout facing Nash and his lady.

D'Amelio's head turned, like the head of a character in a colored movie, and his mouth moved. After a few seconds his voice reached them: "Signor! Signora! Where are you? I am los'! Oh, helpa me, dear friendsa!"

Nash grinned."He's such an impudent duck you can't help liking him. I'm almost tempted to —but I guess—"

"Prosper! Don't you dare!"

"I was saying I guess I'd better not. We've got enough troubles." He glanced at the lightening sky."The sun's due any time."

Alicia suggested: "Why don't you use the Shamir now to go back to your own plane?"

"And leave you in this hell hole? Don't be silly!" He glanced down at the gem on his chest, which in the waxing light was sending out gleams of all the spectral colors from red to violet.

No Aryans were in sight, though faint traffic sounds began to filter in from the unseen city surrounding the park. Nash rowed to the side of the lake as far as possible from Shapiro's landing. They hauled the boat out and into the bushes.

Nash suggested: "Maybe we'd better climb a tree until dark—"

"The leaves are all off, Prosper."

"Yeah, so they are. But if we can find some sort of hide-out during the day, we can sneak down to the water front tonight. Jones said he'd be there to pick us up—"

The shrubbery, which up till then had been so accursedly dense, suddenly looked so sparse as to be practically nonexistent.

"They'll be hunting for us around here anyway," said Nash."Let's hike up north a mile or so."

That procedure went well until they came to a big open weedy field."Too risky to cross," said Nash."Let's skirt it—"

Around they went, flitting from tree to tree. Halfway around—

"Halt!"

They jumped and whirled. Fifty feet away an Aryan sat on an outcropping of rock, covering them with his rifle. He was in the plainest of plain sight, but the fugitive pair had been watching the field so closely as to overlook him completely.

Nash, without a word, seized Alicia's hand and set off at a clumping run. Ka-pow! went the rifle; ka-pow!

Alicia, once started, quickly got ahead of Nash, but did not run away from him altogether. The rifle crashed twice more, and the sentry shouted. Other shouts came through the bare trees from different directions.

"Rotten bad shooting," panted Nash."This way—"

"No, this way! There's an Arry over that way—"

It made little difference, for another Aryan hove in sight, running, and then another. A bullet went whick close to their heads.

"Hi, partner!"

The voice came from nowhere visible, until Nash noticed that the curtain of ivy that cascaded down over a granite outcrop was parted at the base, and a lantern-jawed face looked out: that of Arizona Bill Averoff.

They did not need instructions, but ducked down out of sight of their pursuers and went through the ivy on hands and knees. After a few knee-bruising irregularities, the tunnel expanded to walkable size. It was no longer a natural cave entrance but a man-made passageway.

"What's this, Arizona?" asked Nash, after a quick handshake.

"This yere," said Averoff, "is an old tunnel that leads out from the cellar of the old Arsenal. I shore hope them Arries don't find the exit, because they's several of us hidin' out in that there cellar."

"Say, Arizona, what's this I heard about your going astray with the message I gave you?"

"It's so," said Averoff gloomily."You shoulda wrote the boid's name down, mister. Now I gotta watch out for both the Arries and my own government, which says it's gonna hang me and you if it catches us. Course in time they'll see it was bad luck 'steada our fault, but that won't do us no good if we been already suspendered."

"Thanks for them kind words, partner," said Nash."Is that your cellar ahead?"

"Yeah." There were a couple of empty hinges on the side of the tunnel where a door had once been, and a ten-by-sixteen concrete-floored chamber lit by one candle. Five men and a woman sat around the wall. Rickety steps led up to a closed trapdoor.

"Folks," said Averoff, "I got a coupla recruits: Miss Woodson and Mr. de Nêche. The lady is Mrs. Russell, the soldier is General Leeds, and the Turkish gent is Sultan Arslan—oh, do you boys know each other already?"

Arslan Bey got to his feet and said heavily: "In view of the fact that M. de Nêche just robbed us of everything we had, even our women, we—think —we do!"