Kenneth Bulmer: The Key to Irunium

Prestin stood up and walked across to Macklin. He saw the frail humanity now for the first time, and he prepared to assert himself. He began to speak in a gentle voice. “Now then, David Macklin. You’re upset and—”

That was as far as he was allowed to go.

“Upset! Of course I’m upset! I wasn’t a flyer for twenty-five years and kicked out at the end without having a right to be upset! Confound you!”

“My father was an airman for longer than that, and he wasn’t kicked out at the end—and he would not agree with your sentiments, Macklin.”

“I’ve heard about your father, young Prestin. R.A.F. Very high and mighty. Air Marshal, wasn’t he, before he retired? Isn’t that a failure? If he didn’t make C.A.S.—didn’t he fail, too?”

“Nobody I know thinks so. You’d better leave, Macklin. I’m too tired to argue about myself, but if you begin to insult my father I shall have to break your stick for you—in a place it will do the most good.”

Macklin’s thin face with the chubby red cheeks suddenly broke into myriad lines and wrinkles as he smiled his charming smile. His dark eyes caught the light and glittered. “What the blazes are we two arguing for, Bob! Confound it all, we’re allies! Friends! We’re both on the same side, aren’t we?”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve. I’m on nobody’s side until I know what’s going on. Good Lord! You come bursting into my room in the middle of the night, babbling about this and that, telling me nothing, and then you can’t understand when I insist on your leaving! Go on, Macklin! Get out!”

The strangeness of this nighttime interview had been working on Preston and he was only too aware that the atmosphere could easily influence him to actions he might regret afterwards. David Macklin did not look dangerous now, despite his stick-banging expertise. What did the man want? For that matter, now that doubt had been thrown on her genuineness, what did the Contessa Montevarchi want? Whatever it was, if it meant getting Fritzy back, Prestin wanted to know.

Shouting at Macklin to get out was a juvenile reaction to unexpected stimulus. He said, “No, Macklin. Don’t go. Not yet, at any rate. I guess I do want to know what you want—if it will help Miss Upjohn.”

“That’s better, my boy. Much better. I am an easily aroused man and my temper flares up—you’ll get used to it, you’ll get used to it.”

“Maybe. What do you know about Fritzy’s disappearance?”

“I might know a great deal, if I’m right. If I’m wrong—why, then, I know no more than you or the police or anyone else.” Macklin stood up, brushing his cloak into neat folds. “But we can’t hang about here if the Montevarchi is coming. She won’t be alone. Of that I can assure you.”

“Not alone—?”

“You are a simpleton, aren’t you? The Contessa is as aware as I am of the power you possess.”

Prestin raised a halting hand, a half smile of amazement moving his lips in disbelief. “Power I have? Me? What are you talking about now?”

“I thought you knew? You mean?—my friend in London told me that your acquaintances were aware that you kept losing things, and always had, so they said. You mean you didn’t know? I only wish I had met you years ago—”

But the horrible implications had gotten through to Prestin. He sat back on the edge of the chair, unsteadily, feeling sick. He licked his lips. “ I—I !” He shook his head. “No! You’re wrong! It wasn’t me !”

“How else do you explain it?”

Prestin glared at the older man, pleading for a release from this suddenly descended guilt. “I couldn’t have! Fritzy’s not a thing, not a book or a pencil or a paper clip! She’s a girl—”

“And you made her vanish!”

A soft knock sounded on the door and a husky voice said, “Bob? It’s me, Perdita. Open the door.”

“We’ll have to leave right away!” Macklin took Prestin’s arm and began to drag him toward the window.

Prestin shook the hand off. He felt even more bemused by the awful suggestion hurled at him by Macklin than by the man’s evident dislike and fear of the Contessa.

“Why?” Prestin demanded. “ Why ?”

“Because a locked door won’t keep her and her Trugs out! They’ll be in here and lasso you like a capon for the oven. Come on, boy!”

“I didn’t mean that! Why should Fritzy’s disappearance be my fault? Why? What did I do ?”

“You know, Prestin! You know! And the Contessa will manipulate you for her own black ends! Come on, boy—you won’t stand a chance against her!”

Resentment, stubbornness and sheer bloody-mindedness jangled in Prestin. After his experiences he wanted to strike out and pay back some of his own guilt.

“Bob!” The Contessa’s voice purred from beyond the closed door. The handle turned and shook. “Bob! You said the door would be ajar! Open it up, there’s a good boy.”

Everyone was calling him “boy” all the time. That annoyed Prestin. It was a tiny focal point, but it was that. It showed him all too clearly how he was regarded by these two people: He was a pawn in their games.

“That door stays locked,” he told Macklin. “And you go out by the window—alone. I’m going to bed.”

“You idiot.” Macklin half lifted his cane. His dark eyes flashed toward the door. It shook now with far more than a polite young Contessa’s fragile hand butterflying the handle. Weight was being applied out there.

“Listen to that!” Macklin snapped. “If the Trugs get you, you’ll—”

“Trugs!” said Prestin, with a sarcastic bite. “And you can’t stop to tell me about them either, can you!”

“I could. But any minute they’ll be here to tell you themselves.”

A low groan shuddered from the door as the hinges and lock resisted the strain. The Contessa had not spoken again. Of course she knew by now that he had locked her out so the pressure being applied to open the door spoke more eloquently than words.

Suddenly, he felt afraid.

Trugs?

He looked at Macklin, now standing, leaning on his stick and regarding him with a saturnine scowl.

“Well, Bob? I’m not hanging around to welcome those monsters the Montevarchi keeps as house pets! If you won’t come with me, I must make sure you are of no use to the opposition.”

Prestin let out a shaky little laugh, the laugh of shock. “You mean—you’d kill me? Oh, come now, Macklin—”

“I wouldn’t kill you, Bob. You’re too valuable. I’d just freeze up some of your brain, denature your thinking apparatus. It’s a pretty trick—”

“Just a minute!” Prestin held out his hand appealingly. “Everything’s been happening so fast! You tell me this, half-tell me something else. I want to find Fritzy, and you make the horrible suggestion that it was my fault she disappeared. You tell me I have some power and that you and the Contessa are fighting for it—for me. What the blazes do you expect me to do about it all in a few seconds flat?”

“I would have thought it was all very simple and clear. If you’re going to stay alive and functioning usefully in this world, Bob, you have to think fast. Of course you have a power to make things disappear; you’ve had that all your life.”

The door shook and with a squeal the handle cocked up at an angle.

“They’ll be through in a minute. Those Trugs are hefty—and mean!”

“This power—?”

“Oh, yes. You know. My friend told me enough for me to recognize a Porteur in you at once. Just where do you think you have been sending your paper clips and your rubber bands and all the other little items you always lose?”