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  “I’ll assume responsibility for the damage, sir,” said Colonel-General Vandergilt as she marched into the room. “My department will pay.”

  “I didn’t know your department had that much money,” Maijstral snarled. Vandergilt looked doubtful for a moment. Maijstral began to lurch toward the bedroom. He wished to be present when Roberta was discovered, and offer such moral support as was possible.

  “Not so fast, Maijstral,” said Colonel-General Vandergilt. She stepped forward in her black uniform, silver buttons shining. “You’ll have to be searched.” So eager was she to get about the searching that no less than three separate strands of hair had escaped her helmet and were dangling in her eyes.

  “You can search me in the bedroom as well as anywhere,” Maijstral said, and kept moving.

  “Life-form in the closet!” called a policeman from the bedroom, and suddenly there was the businesslike clacking of weapons being readied, and the cops began to deploy into attack formations.

  Alarm flashed through Maijstral. “Put the guns down!” he said hastily. He had arrived in the bedroom door and was acutely, aware that anyone firing would probably have to shoot right-through him. He gingerly stepped to one side.

  “Closet,” he said. “Open.”

  Roberta looked quite cool as she stepped into full view, wearing her dressing gown as if she were making her grand entrance at a ball, and if Maijstral hadn’t been quite so concerned about all the guns leveled at his spleen, he might have spared a moment or two for admiration.

  No guns crackled, and Maijstral breathed a fervent sigh of relief. “Ah,” he said, and stepped into the bedroom. “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce my alibi, Her Grace the Duchess of Benn. Your grace, this is Colonel-General Denise Vandergilt, Constellation Special Services.”

  Colonel-General Vandergilt stuffed stray hair into her helmet and stalked into the center of the room, followed by Joseph Bob and his family. Vandergilt looked coldly at the Duchess while the Prince and his family looked in surprise at each other.

  “What’s your real name?” Vandergilt said. “I don’t use titles.”

  “No titles?” Roberta said. Her eyebrows rose. “Fine with me—Denise. My name is Roberta Altunin.”

  Vandergilt looked as if she was adding the name to some mental dossier, which she probably was.

  Maijstral turned to Joseph Bob, who was beginning to look abashed. “I would have let you in earlier,” he said, “but there are certain things a gentleman—”

  “Object in the ventilator,” called a policeman.

  Maijstral threw up his hands. This was going to be a long morning.

  “It’s the right wave pattern,” the policeman added, peering at his detectors.

  The ventilator was pulled away, and Colonel-General Vandergilt produced a “fingerprint handkerchief,” which, despite its name, was a handkerchief guaranteed not to remove fingerprints, and which could be used for holding and transporting evidence. She reached into the ventilator and took out the object therein. When she showed it to the assembled company, there was a triumphant glow in her eyes.

  “Is this your property, sir?” she asked the Prince.

  The room reeled about Maijstral. He wanted to clutch his heart, fall to his knees, and (were ashes only available) pour ashes on his head.

  Displayed on the white handkerchief was the prototype wooden revolver of Colonel Samuel Colt.

  “I didn’t do it!” Maijstral said.

  Colonel-General Vandergilt smiled thinly. “That’s what they all say.” She handed the pistol to an underling. “Have that checked for fingerprints,” she said.

  Had not Maijstral been preoccupied by visions of the fate that awaited him—red-robed judges, unfriendly prison wardens, overly friendly fellow inmates, fetters, thumbscrews, and so on—he would have noticed Joseph Bob turning a dangerous shade of red.

  Vandergilt puffed her cheeks and blew a strand of hair out of her face—she didn’t want to spoil her big-moment— and then looked stern and dropped a black-gauntleted hand on Maijstral’s shoulder.

  “Drake Maijstral, you’re under arrest!” she proclaimed, then turned to Roberta. “Arid so are your accomplices,” she added, and smiled. “

  “Accomplices!” Roberta said, outraged.

  “Accomplices,” Vandergilt repeated, and then she turned to Joseph Bob. “Sir, if you will accompany us to the police station, you can make a formal identification of your property and sign a complaint.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Maijstral said again, but no one seemed to be listening to him.

  “Complaint?” Joseph Bob muttered. He was bright scarlet. “Complaint? Damned if I’ll sign a complaint! A guest in my home!”

  Maijstral looked at Joseph Bob in sudden hope. Joseph Bob was going to save him! he thought. His old school chum! Good old J.B.!

  The Colonel-General looked puzzled. “Sir,” she said, “if you don’t sign the complaint, I won’t be able to arrest Maijstral and his gang.”

  “I’ll be signing no complaints!” Joseph Bob said, and then he turned to Maijstral, and Maijstral’s heart stopped at the fury in the Prince’s eyes. Joseph Bob shook a finger in Maijstral’s face. “A guest in my home, and you steal from me!”

  “I didn’t do it,” Maijstral pointed out.

  Joseph Bob socked him in the jaw. It was a clean, professional punch, one that would make any pom boxer proud, and it knocked Maijstral sprawling.

  Joseph Bob had a number of intentions at this point, all of which were fated to go sadly awry. His first intention was to stand commandingly over Maijstral’s prone body while denouncing him, a dramatic pose recommended by any number of precedents derived from the theater. Unfortunately Joseph Bob had just broken two knuckles on Maijstral’s head and spoiled his intended effect by hopping around the room while clutching his wounded hand.

  “Maijstral!” he yelped, turning white. “I’ll have satisfaction on the field of honor! My brother will speak for me!”

  Joseph Bob’s second intention, likewise derived from the theater, was to stalk dramatically from the room and leave behind an awed silence, an intention that was frustrated, in the first instance, by the rather crabbed, hunched-over stance his wound was compelling him to adopt, and in the second, by the well-delivered power kick that Roman planted in his face.

  Roman, as it happens, was a pom boxer, and in the course of avenging his employer against a dastardly surprise attack, he knew better than to risk fragile hand bones battering away at the solid bone of someone’s skull, not when a better weapon was at hand—in this case, a foot encased in a sturdy boot.

  Joseph Bob’s nose exploded like an overripe kibble fruit, and the Prince de Tejas sailed backward into Maijstral’s room and joined him on the carpet.

  Arlette flung herself down on her husband, either to assure herself as to his well-being or to protect him against further assault.

  His remaining fur bristling, Roman advanced, a huge, alarming, red-eyed menace, but was brought up short by the weapons of a dozen or so police that were suddenly thrust up under his muzzle.

  “Roman,” Roberta warned. “Don’t.”

  Roman fell back, but the snarl remained on his face.

  He really was a bad molter.

  Maijstral, to this point, had been too stunned by Joseph Bob’s punch to be able to react to any of the subsequent events. He tried to sit up, then decided that remaining prone might prove a course easier to sustain. Roberta dropped to his side and cradled his head in her hands. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “No,” Maijstral said, and felt a certain pride at retaining his grip on both speech and reality.

  “Shall I stand as your second?” Roberta asked, “I’ve had practice at it, after all.”

  Maijstral, who didn’t at this point wish to attempt more syllables than absolutely necessary, nodded his answer. She turned to the Bubber.

  “Will,” she said, “I’ll talk to you later.” She looked at the others. “I believe
the rest of you no longer have any business here.”

  Joseph Bob was unable to regain his feet, and he was carried from the room by the police. When Roman kicked someone, the someone stayed kicked.

  Maijstral, the chimes in his head subsiding, realized that he’d been saved from the prison by virtue of the fact that he was about to die in a duel with the finest swordsman and pistol shot in the Principality of Tejas.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Roman, Drexler,” Maijstral said, “I want Conchita Sparrow brought to me. I confess I do not care how this is accomplished. But as I intend that she confess to framing me, I would prefer her conscious, or at least capable of consciousness, by the time she actually arrives.”

  “Very good, sir,” said Roman.

  “Take any recordings you may find. When she stole the pistol, she may have recorded her mission to sell on the market.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go at once.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Drexler and Roman bowed and, after stuffing their clothing with weapons, made their exit, Roman trailing a fine cloud of black hair as he left. Maijstral fingered the large semi-life patch that was extending its anesthetic tendrils into his damaged flesh and considered that, if he were Conchita Sparrow and saw Roman in his current state coming toward her with evil intent, he’d confess on the spot.

  He rose stiffly from his chair and lurched toward the service plate, where he summoned robots to carry his belongings to his rented flier. It was now impossible to stay at Joseph Bob’s estate. He would be moving to the next place on his itinerary, the Underwater Palace of Quintana Roo, where he had been invited for a weekend. He would be arriving a few days early, but fortunately that was all right with Prince Hunac, his host, who already had many guests in residence.

  There was a knock on the door, and Roberta stepped in without waiting for a reply. She kissed Maijstral’s cheek, thoughtfully choosing the undamaged one. “I’ve been talking to the Bubber,” she said. “I thought he and I had best establish a few protocols at the start.”

  “Very sensible,” Maijstral said. He was all in favor of protocols and technicalities, anything that would delay or complicate the situation long enough so that Maijstral could either find the real culprit and get the duel called off, or alternatively somehow fix the encounter’s outcome. Either way, as far as Maijstral was concerned, would prove satisfactory.

  He hobbled to the sofa and sat down with a sigh of pain. Roberta joined him. The latest-model Windsong robots entered the room on silent repellers, and on Maijstral’s instructions picked up his luggage in their invisible grapplers and carried it off.

  “Will doesn’t think you did it, either,” Roberta said. “He ventured the opinion that you’re a sufficiently good magician that, if you’d known the pistol was there, you could have kept anyone from finding it. So he’s inclined to help Joseph Bob see reason.”

  “And Joseph Bob?”

  “Disinclined to see any reason whatever, I’m afraid. And Roman’s knocking him silly didn’t help matters.”

  “Hmm.”

  “He insists that you’re at fault for ‘permitting your servant to attack him’ as I believe he phrased it.”

  Indignation flamed in Maijstral. “I don’t know how I could have stopped Roman, since I’d just been floored by His Highness’s sneaky punch,” he said. And then he realized he was being indignant and made an effort to suppress it. People torn by indignation didn’t wriggle out of duels, and that, he reminded himself, was what he was after.

  “It occurred to me to point this out,” Roberta said, “but I decided it wouldn’t improve matters, so I didn’t.”

  “Quite rightly,” Maijstral said.

  Roberta smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “Now, I suppose, we ought to discuss weapons.”

  Oh, why bring them into it, Maijstral thought.

  Still, best to get it clear. The array of dueling weapons permitted by Khosali High Custom was truly staggering, and there had to be some that would give Maijstral an advantage.

  “Joseph Bob is an expert pistol shot, and a fine swordsman,” he said. “I would prefer to leave those out of the picture entirely.”

  “Very well.”

  “I’d also like to delay the whole business,” Maijstral said. “Give tempers a chance to cool, and give me a chance to find the real culprit and prove it was she who stole the pistol.”

  “She?” Roberta’s eyebrows lifted. “Do you know who did it?”

  “A licensed burglar named Conchita Sparrow. She’s been trying to get herself hired as my tech, and I turned her down. By way of demonstrating her abilities, she broke in here two nights ago, interestingly enough by way of the same ventilator shaft in which Colonel Colt’s pistol was found.”

  Roberta cocked her head to one side as she considered this. “It sounds plausible, at least. You don’t have any other idea who might have been responsible?”

  “So far as I know, I don’t have an enemy in the world. Unless, it’s one of your beaux,” he added, “mad with jealousy.” He tried to smile, but pain stabbed his jaw, and he winced instead.

  “Poor Drake.” She patted his uninjured cheek again. “What, by the way, do we tell the family?”

  “Tell them the whole thing’s a misunderstanding.”

  “No,” She smiled patiently. “I mean about us.”

  “Oh.” Maijstral blinked. Preoccupied with his own problem, he’d quite forgotten the whole matter of his betrothal.

  “Well,” he said, “it seems to me that it would be unfair of me to make you a widow before we’re even engaged. Why don’t we tell the family that we’re postponing any announcement until my business with Joseph Bob is resolved?”

  A shadow of disappointment crossed Roberta’s face. “Very well,” she said, and rose. “I’ll go tell them now.”

  She walked toward the door. “Roberta?” he said.

  She turned. “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  She smiled. “You’re very welcome.”

  “And will you do me another favor?”

  “If I can.”

  “Will you ship my father down to Quintana Roo for me? I’ll look after him from there.”

  “Of course,” she said, and made her exit.

  *

  “I didn’t do it!” Conchita Sparrow yelped.

  Drexler advanced menacingly, a hi-stick dangling from his muzzle. “Pull the other one,” he said, demonstrating a surprising grasp of Human Standard vernacular. (In Khosali it would have come out “Drag the remaining unity,” which would have lacked the colloquial verve of the original.)

  In any language it was purely a figure of-speech, since Conchita Sparrow was in no position to pull anything.

  Roman, by contrast, was in a position to pull all the legs required, as he was holding her by one ankle over the edge of Kanab, one of the Grand Canyon’s more impressive side canyons.

  “Honest!” Conchita said. “I didn’t do it!”

  “I bet Roman is getting tired,” Drexler said. “Aren’t you, Roman?”

  “I could lose my grip at any moment,” Roman warned. He loosened his grasp slightly, just enough for Conchita to fall a few inches, and then caught her again. Conchita gave a strangled shriek.

  Drexler took a languid draw on his hi-stick. “Careful, Roman,” he said, relishing the opportunity once again to demonstrate his grasp of slang, “you might do the lady a mischief.”

  Maijstral contemplated this picture with pleasure. Roman, a menacing piebald giant big even for a Khosalikh, held Conchita, small even for a human, at arm’s length, with rather more ease than Maijstral could hold a child. Media globes, controlled by the proximity wire in Maijstral’s collar, circled the pair like orbiting satellites, ready to record any revelations that might drop from Conchita’s lips.

  “Give a moment to your surroundings, Miss Sparrow,” Maijstral said. Walking bowlegged to minimize his pain, he approached the edge and regarded the deep canyon below. He
took a deep, appreciative breath. “Consider the eons that must have gone into the creation of this magnificent sight into which, at any instant, you may take flight. Consider the work of millennia, as erosion, as vast landslides, as the uplift of the local geology all did their work. Consider its glory in comparison with the alteration in the local formation you will make when you strike the ground below. Which is to say—” He looked at her meaningfully. “None at all.”

  Maijstral threw out his arms to glory in the Canyon’s vastness. “Consider the gorgeousness that will be your last living vision—will you appreciate it as you fall, I wonder?”

  “I’ll be too busy screaming my head off,” Conchita said.

  “Tell us what we want to hear,” Maijstral said, “and there will be no need for screaming at all.”

  “I didn’t do it!” she screamed. Which was followed by a somewhat less coherent scream, abruptly cut off, as Roman’s grip relaxed, then firmed again.

  “Let me prove it!” she said. “I was out stealing last night! I recorded everything—it’s in those spheres your goons captured!”

  “His what?” Drexler growled; his-bristling.

  “Assistants! Associates! Whatever!”

  Annoyance crackled along Maijstral’s nerves. He really didn’t want to credit the notion that Conchita actually had an alibi.

  “Stealing where?” he asked. “And what?”

  “In Australia. An entire consignment of rare pink and green Australian diamonds from the Nokh & Nokh depository. No style points, but I needed the cash.”

  Maijstral frowned. Conchita’s story had the discouraging ring of truth.

  It must be admitted that sometimes even Allowed Burglars—whose calling glorified, nay demanded, the search for and acquisition of the rare, the wonderful, and the celebrated—sometimes even Allowed Burglars demonstrated a regrettable lack of regard for the possibilities of their profession and merely stole things for the money. Usually, it must be said, in bulk, Conchita’s vaultful of diamonds being a good example. Because these jobs were rarely, granted anything like the full ten points awarded for style, many were never submitted to the Imperial Sporting Commission for rating, but merely went to support the burglar in maintaining the high style with which he floated from place to place, looking for rarer forms of plunder.