Solomon's Stone

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."

"Thanks again," said Nash."My name's de Nêche, and if I can ever do anything for you, let me know."

"Aye-aye, Mr. de Nêche. I'm Cap'n Jones; Ahab Dana Jones." He looked at Nash expectantly, which that young man took to be a hint that a little cash on the barrel head would be welcome.

"Take this horse," said Nash, dismounting."If you don't want to keep him, he'll bring a good price."

"Aw now, mister," said Captain Jones, "I wouldn't want to separate a man from his beast like that. Why, I had a parrot to once—"

"No, I insist," said Nash, realizing that as far as the sailors knew the animal was his own. After more Alphonse-Gaston parley the horse was accepted, and Nash walked quickly off, leaving the sailors arguing whether the creature should be taken into their house, and, if so, how.

Eleanor Thompson Berry had rounded up the other two riderless horses and was waiting for him near where Reginald Vance Kramer still sat on his post and smoked. The detective said to him as he neared: "For a bird who thinks there's too much fighting around here, you haven't done half badly in the last twelve hours."

He indicated the two bodies. Nash looked, and saw that they were really just bundles of clothes from which the contents had vanished.

"You weren't much help, m'sieur," he said belligerently.

"My dear chap, what could I do? I work with the jolly old bean, when I work at all. The snickersnee's more your line."

"Oh, well," said Nash."Who were those people, do you know?"

"Probably soulless ones belonging to one of the sheiks or sultans, out shopping for the harem. My guess would be that they were Arslan's." Seeing by Nash's expression that the cavalier was bursting with more queries, he added: "No more questions, please, there's a good chap. I want to work on my book on ancient musical instruments." Therewith Kramer got out a notebook and began scribbling furiously.

Nash shrugged and turned away. Now that he had a horse he could cover ground fast enough to learn what he had to. He mounted. Miss Berry did likewise, though her costume was hardly suitable.

"You don't talk much," commented Eleanor Thompson Berry.

"Oh, don't I?" said Nash."No, not like that other man—Mr. Kramer. Except to ask these people the way, you've hardly said a word."

"Uh-huh."

"But why? Is there a reason? I want to know; I have so much to learn before I can be a lecturer. You are... let me think... sad? Is that it?"

"Well," said Nash, "I killed—" he almost added "two men," but decided not to raise the ghost of the robber of last night. What Miss Berry didn't know wouldn't hurt her, especially if she were going to join the forces of whatever government held out in the City Hall.

"Was that wrong? Should you have let the men in white take me?"

"I don't suppose it was wrong, exactly. I just don't like killing people."

"But then why—"

"Excuse me, but do you mind if we talk about something else?" This suggestion brought a stream of questions about the astral plane to which Nash did not know the answers.. He was glad when they hove in sight of the City Hall.

"There's your destination, madame," he said."And now if you'll excuse me—"

The woman said: "I wish you'd go in with me, chevalier; I don't know anyone."

Nash almost weakened, but the thought of the officials detaining him while they investigated the puncturing of two of their citizens—who might, for all Nash knew, have influential friends—stiffened his spine.

"Sorry," he said, "but I have an errand of my own. Au 'voir." He waved his hat and trotted off before she could protest further. Now for the Shamir, before he got involved in any more bloodletting!

The wide street that ran north from the City Hall Plaza corresponded to the mundane New York's Broadway; some of the street signs in fact said "Broadway." But others said various things, such as "Christopher Magellan Avenue" or "Shin Fane Boulevard." The stretches bearing these names began and ended without visible plan, as if half the population had tried its hand at putting up street signs with whatever names pleased their fancy. Many stretches were much too narrow to make the name "Broadway" appropriate, and there were twists and jogs that the mundane plane's equivalent lacked. Nash even had to detour around a couple of Indian tepees set up in the middle of the street, with Indians sitting crosslegged in front of them.

The buildings were still smaller than those of Prosper Nash's New York, and there was not a skyscraper in sight. He did pass a couple of huge excavations that might have been meant as foundations for skyscrapers. But work on them had long been abandoned; the sides were caving in, in one case taking a good part of the avenue with them.

Nash inferred that the astralites tended toward picturesqueness at the expense of practicality. The chevalier whose body he inhabited was probably of that sort, too; always getting into fights— But if the chevalier was something thought up by Nash, wasn't it Nash's own fault? An unanswerable question.

The park to which Kramer had referred must be the equivalent of Central Park, though what a desert island would be doing there remained a puzzle. Nash had reached what he judged to be the latitude of the Fifties when the faint popping of gunfire reminded him that there was a war on. He hesitated, and noticed a restaurant, and was reminded that he had not yet eaten lunch.

As he hung up his hat he was startled to see that it shared the hatrack with a golden crown. The owner of the crown was evidently the dignified person in the embroidered robe sitting at the counter. A king who was lunching on coffee and sinkers ought to be as good a source of information as any.

"How's the war going, m'sieur?" he asked when he had ordered.

"Ah," said the royal dunker."You may well ask." After an impressive pause, he added: "They've cleared the Aryans out of the southern half of the park, though they still raid down the west side." Another pause."Well?"

"Well what?"

"You're supposed to say, 'Your sage majesty is most gracious. '"

"Your sage majesty is most gracious."

"Ah. That's better."

The counterman put in: "Heh, he's a good one. You'd think he was really a king still."

"Ah, but I am, my good varlet. 'Not all the water in the rough rude sea can wash the balm off from an anointed king; the breath of worldly men cannot depose the... the—' How does it go?"

"I don't know how it goes," snapped the counterman, "but if you want to. eat here on credit any more you better not call me 'varlet. ' "

"But my dear—commoner, if you prefer—think of the curiosity trade which my patronage brings—"

"Ga wan, kings are a dime a dozen—"

Nash left them arguing and continued on his way. Pedestrians were fewer. Despite the variation in their costumery, which gave the city the air of movie lot during lunch hour, there was a certain uniformity about their physical type that struck Prosper Nash. They were nearly all stalwart, handsome men and women between twenty and forty; there were hardly any old people, and no children.

A few blocks farther north Nash came upon a barricade of cobblestones and furniture, which had once stretched clear across the avenue, but which had since been broken down in the middle to let traffic through. A little later he passed a group of soldiers uniformed like movie ushers. The statement is not literally accurate, for the "uniforms" were far from uniform, but they made up in gorgeousness what they lacked in similarity.

Presently a horseman passed him at an easy canter: a man in a cloth cap and a shabby twentieth-century civilian suit, with a red band tied around his arm and a rifle slung across his back. He gave Nash a suspicious glance as he went by, and Nash saw a small reddish beard under a pair of sharp slightly Mongoloid eyes.

There were more soldiers, and the sound of distant shots broke out again briefly. Then Nash sighted greenery ahead: Without doubt the park corresponded to Central, though its borders were irregular; it was much wilder. The paths were fewer and in an advanced state of disrepair. Moreover there were dwellings in it: a Colonial cottage here, nearly hidden by vegetation; a log cabin there. The trees were shedding bright autumnal foliage.

A group of soldiers sat under a tulip tree eating lunch. Nash asked the way to the lake, got a jerk of a thumb from a hussar with his mouth full of sandwich, and continued on.

At the point where the path debouched on the lake shore there was a small boathouse bearing a sign:

CAPT. PERRY DECATUR SHAPIRO

BOATS FOR RENT

Sounds of carpentry came from the boathouse. Nash dismounted and tried to tie his horse to a tree. But the animal developed fractiousness and tugged Nash toward the lake. The idea finally penetrated his head that the horse was thirsty. He let it drink and tied it so that it could reach plenty of the long grass that grew around.

Captain Perry Decatur Shapiro crawled out from under the boat on which he was working, wiped his hands, and put on his swallow-tailed, brass-buttoned coat and his cocked hat. He and Nash exchanged courtly greetings, and the captain asked if a boat was wanted.

"I have but three fit to put out," he explained."Two have already been taken today. The rest were so riddled in the battle that they'll not be ready for a week."

"What battle, m'sieur?" asked Nash.

"Weren't you in town when it happened? It was during the recent attempt of the Aryan scoundrels. They came down the lake on timber rafts, and our saucy boys went out in the boats to stop them. By God, sir, it was hot work for a while, since we couldn't sink the rafts."

"Have the Aryans all been driven away from the lake now?"

"Yes, sir. So here I sit, hiring my sound boats out to pay for repairs on the rest. Though being so near the front, and what with old Tukiphat's desert island taking up half the lake, I get little enough custom."

"Who," asked Nash carefully, "is Tukiphat?"

"The genius of the Shamir, of course. Though I don't know why he chose my lake to set himself and his bauble up in. He leaves room neither for pleasure boating nor for a proper battle. I wanted to drag the boats over to the river to join Larry Preble Pappas' squadron, but the staff wouldn't hear of it. Those noodles in City Hall are so bemused to the word 'defense' that they'll never put down the vermin, which can be accomplished only by overwhelming attack."

Nash hastily helped launch the rowboat and rowed out before Captain Shapiro could start another tirade. The captain's rate of a dollar an hour made his wallet nerve wince, but he reasoned that if he secured the Shamir he would no longer have to worry about the chevalier's finances.

When he got away from shore he looked around; sure enough there was a most patent desert island; a bare little knob of sand and rock crowned by one sorrowful palm tree, the ensemble looking as out of place in the park as a juke box in a church.

It certainly did not take up half the lake. Nash rowed closer and saw an empty rowboat lying on the sand of the island's minuscule beach. The whole island had a faintly queer, insubstantial look; its perspectives were, somehow, not quite right. Nash put that effect down to an illusion resulting from its general incongruity. Surrounding it was what looked at first sight like a circular ribbon of oil on the water, several yards wide, smooth, dully blue-gray.

Nash decided not to investigate more closely because two other rowboats were in sight. He rowed casually toward one of these; it held two gold-braided soldiers fishing, who warned him off with fingers to their lips. The other looked empty until Nash got close to it. Then he saw that in it lay a young woman sun-bathing in the costume most effective for that occupation. He rowed off, face tingling with embarrassment.

Imagining you were a dashing cavalier was all right for daydreaming. But right now he was more interested in getting back into his own body before Bechard did something awful with it. The demon had not given him detailed instructions for using the Shamir; had in fact sent him off with a mere airy assurance that he would learn what was necessary when the time came. Either Bechard had a great and unfounded confidence in him, or was not very bright, or knew in some supernatural way that things would in fact take care of themselves. The last was the most comforting hypothesis, so Prosper Nash adopted it, pulled into a little cove near the outlet where he would be out df sight of the other boats and Captain Shapiro, lay back, pushed his hat over his eyes, and dozed.

He was awakened by cold and a great interior emptiness. The stars were coming out in quick succession; this city must have a much less smoky atmosphere than its mundane equivalent. The boats were gone from the lake. Everything was quiet saye for the faint sounds of the city's primitive means of transportation and the occasional pop of a gun over to eastward.

Nash's main emotions were impatience to get the job over with, and lonesomeness. He was reminded of how he had felt when he first moved to New York from Hartford, knowing nobody.

If Captain Shapiro came out to demand explanations, Nash would simply tell him he had fallen asleep and then had lost his way in the dark. But the little boathouse was as dark as the rest, and the incongruous island sat there inviting him to storm it, and beg, borrow, or steal the Shamir from this Tukiphat. Who was that? The genius of the Shamir, Shapiro had said; so what? A kind of spirit? He would know soon enough.

It looked too easy; the rowboat still lay on the sand. A genius who used a rowboat sounded like a pretty finite sort of being. Still, Nash would have liked to know what he was up against. The sight of a grim but definite policeman on the rock pile ahead would have been a comfort. Decidedly he was too easygoing a person for enterprises requiring meticulous planning and desperate nerve.

Not a sound from the shore or the island. Nash pulled with a short stroke to minimize the squeak of the oarlocks. It was too easy—

It was.