Kenneth Bulmer: The Key to Irunium

Walking normally some time later, flanked by the other two, he had calmed down sufficiently to say, “That was murder!”

“Sure,” said Alec, gruffly. “And we’d have been the victims if I hadn’t fired first.”

“What—” Prestin swallowed. “What will people say when they find that—that thing bleeding green blood all over the pavement?”

“They won’t find him. The Montevarchi will see to that.”

“You see, Bob,” put in Macklin, speaking with only the slightest panting after their flight. “Neither one of us wants to let knowledge of Irunium leak out.”

“That seems fair—” began Prestin. Then: “Irunium?”

“Irunium. That’s the name of the place. That’s probably where Fritzy’s gone.”

They had walked down to the corner of Via Due Macelli and Via del Tritone, the place very quiet after the narrow, crowded bustle of the day. Soon the noise and rush would start up again and the shops would be opening.

Prestin shook his head, feeling the tiredness like blotting paper sapping his energies. “Irunium. Well?”

“I intend to tell you everything you wish to know, everything you must know. But not here. You can’t go back to your hotel now—”

“But I’ll have to! All my gear is there—”

“I’ll arrange for it to be picked up. The Montevarchi just loves little boys like you to walk straight back into her webs.”

“Well. All right.” Prestin was thinking of the Trugs, and he felt no compunction to go near them again. “Where do we go from here?”

“Alec?”

The big bear-like man smiled, his broad face showing his delight in being able to be of service to Macklin.

“Out of Rome. That’s for sure. Margie has a car and we can hit the road south, the Autostrada del Sol. We can cut over to Foggia later, when we’ve thrown them.”

Alec called Foggia “Fozh”, Prestin noticed, remembering his father talking to him years ago.

“Just a minute,” he interrupted, walking briskly between the other two along the empty pavements. “I have an exposition tomorrow—that is, today. I can’t miss that.”

“Why not?” Macklin sounded amused.

“Why not? Well, hell’s bells, man! It’s my living!”

“And if you do go it’ll be your dying.”

A bass chuckle rumbled from Alec. “And follow that, if you can.”

“If I had a straw hat and a cane I’d do a song and dance routine for you!” said Prestin savagely. He felt the impotence of a leaf in the wind. “If it’s so all-fired important and deadly what are you two happy about now? What’s so funny?”

“You.”

He stood there, feeling like a fool, feeling annoyed, feeling so tired he could hardly stand.

“Thank you. That’s very nice—”

“Simmer down, Bob. I’ll explain it all. Right now you need a large cup of black coffee—and so do Alec and I.”

“Motion herewith adopted, nem con,” said Alec.

“You two are a real couple of clowns. But, yes—I could do with a drink of coffee, if there is no tea, and a sitdown. My legs are beginning to shake.”

At once Macklin took his arm. “Hold up, Bob. We’re nearly there.”

The house to which Macklin guided him at last looked no different from any of the other tall, narrow, golden-red bricked buildings of the street. The door opened to a touch and they went through to stand in shadow beneath a yellow lamp, with the arched opening to an inner courtyard before them. A tree sighed its leaves together and a fountain tinkled silver. The faintest of violet and pink and green flushings in the sky hinted at a dawn not too far off. The tiredness in his muscles dragged at Prestin now.

Presently an old woman wearing ragged carpet slippers and a shapeless shawl around her shoulders shuffled across, flicking the oval yellow spot from a hand flashlight ahead of her. She led them quietly into a small room off the entranceway, coughing a wet little cough, shuffling, saying hackingly, “ Aspet” and again, weakly, “ Aspet .”

They waited.

A light, quick step sounded on the flags outside and then the door opened and a girl muffled up in a long emerald cloak burst in. Prestin caught a vivid impression of impatience and laughter, of bright eyes and a mobile full-lipped mouth. She carried a silver-glitter handbag that strained at its fastenings. Her every action bubbled with a buoyant liveliness.

“Fit, Dave? Hi, Alec—so this is the Porteur.”

“Yes, this is Bob Prestin. Bob, this is Margie Lipton.”

“Pleased—” began Prestin.

“How about a cup of Java, Margie?” interrupted Alec.

“Can do. But if you want to be out of the city by dawn you’ll have to hurry.”

Macklin glanced at his watch. “It’s no go, Margie. I’m sorry to have dragged you away from your party, but time is running out on us. If you don’t mind, we’d better take off now. We can stop on the road and Bob can sleep in the car.”

Without a dissenting word she swung back to the door and they followed her out. At the curb waited a Jensen Interceptor FF. Prestin drew in his breath in a little whistle when he saw the car.

Margie smiled over her shoulder at him as they walked toward it. “Yes,” she said with that light confident voice. “It’s all car.”

They sat in the car whose comfort demanded that Prestin fall asleep at once. He forced himself to rouse up as they purred quietly through narrow roads, twisting and turning, rolling with a smooth motion as the big soft full-traction tires rumbled over cobbles’.

Alec sat in the back with him while Macklin, who must be as tired as anyone, sat up front with Margie.

“Why,” said Alec eagerly, “didn’t you get a white car, Margie? White convertibles are all the rage.”

She laughed, gently chiding. “Were all the rage, you mean, Alec. I like this primrose color, and I had that old has-been white painted over, alf. As for a convertible, they stand in the same position as a carriage and four.”

Remembering with a quick and bitter twinge that familiar “alf,” Prestin let his thoughts toll on; he too, knew what aristocracy thought of four horses to a carriage. This girl, this Margie Upton, promised to be quite a gal.

“I like it,” he said.

The car purred discreetly on through the outskirts of Rome, running on two-wheel drive. They turned at last to head south.

Before them, like a white unfolding promise of the sun, the autostrada led on to the scented lands of the south.

As the sun burst up over the hills away to their left and flooded down with its clear Renaissance-golden glow, Margie opened the Jensen up and they began to devour the miles.

Conversation in the car was held only desultorily at first and, without meaning to, Prestin let his head sag lower and lower. He jerked up, feeling a krink in the nape of his neck, a little off-balance mentally, yet determined not to fall asleep until these enigmatic people had answered a few questions.

Sunshine struck hard and brilliantly in from ahead. The car purred sweetly and all around lay the southern Italian countryside. Other cars passed, flashing by on the northern lanes; none passed them going south. Margie, Prestin saw as he looked over her shoulder, was keeping to a steady seventy. Sensible girl. Then he saw the time, realized the position of the sun, and felt the hollowness inside.

Eleven o’clock.

Never.

But, “Had a good sleep, Bob?” Macklin smiled back at him. “That’s good.”

Stiffness in his back made him stretch.

“Mind me, chum,” said Alec, stirring like a bear in the corner of a cage who’s been poked with a stick.

“Sorry.” Prestin had respect for the big man’s powers of sudden destruction; not that he was going to blow Prestin in half with a shotgun, but any man who could do that so—so casually—merited special caution.