“Don’t take it so hard.” I patted him on the back.
Belch belched responsively, childishly, and dabbed at his eyes.
I left him and went back to the dance hall again. Flame had made the arrangements and a room was waiting for me. I fell into bed wearily. The mating calls of the timber wolves lullabied me to sleep.
A pronounced chill creeping down my fundament awoke me. My brain unfogged slowly to consider it. I’d been sleeping on my stomach. Someone had quietly removed the blankets covering me. That same someone had unbuttoned the flap of the long red woolen underwear I’d been using as a substitute for pajamas. Hence the cold wind on my posterior.
Managing to be very still about it, I craned my neck. An oil lamp, with the wick turned very low, was being lowered towards the area bared by the unbuttoning of the flap. A shadowy figure was bending over to see what was being illuminated.
I turned over and sat up indignantly. Hell, my privacy was being invaded. The figure straightened with a jerk, and the lantern was raised. The face that appeared in the glow above it belong to Flame.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.
“Just checking the size.” Despite the long pause before she spoke, Flame’s voice was calm.
“Huh?” Her answer didn’t make any sense, but more than that her composure rattled me.
“You’ll need more than one set of long johns,” she explained. “I figured to buy you some in the morning, but I forgot the size.”
“So you came in here in the middle of the night and undressed me to find out?” I was flabbergasted.
“A man should change his underwear regularly,” Flame insisted. “If he don’t, he’s no better ’n a bear.”
“Personal hygiene is good citizenship,” I granted. “But couldn’t you have waited until morning and just asked me the size?”
“I s’pose. But I was afraid I’d forget. Just like I forgot the size. I’m always forgettin’ things. So I just figured I’d take a peek while I thought on it.”
“I’ll remind you in the morning,” I told her. “And I’ll tell you the size.”
“I reckon that’ll do.” She started out the door. “Sony if’n I disturbed you,” she said blithely. The door closed behind her.
I lay awake, puzzled, for a long time. Had I missed the boat? Had Flame really sneaked into my room with amorous intent? I’m a sex investigator by profession, and I guess it was only natural that my suspicions should lean toward the erotic. Now, I confess, they dipped toward the bizarre.
There is a type of voyeur—-extremely rare, it’s true -—who is obsessed by the anal. Where the run-of-the-window peeper ogles at large, focusing indiscriminately on mammaries, groins, navels and any other flesh that pops into view, the anally oriented voyeur eschews all save the posterior. Remembering how Flame had kept trying to get behind me when I rose naked from my bathtub, and putting that together with her baring of my derrière while I slept, I was beginning to strongly suspect that she might fall into this rare category of obsession. Thoughtfully scratching the object of her scrutiny, I mused that this was the first time in my experience that I’d encountered this fixation. I owed it to my profession, I decided, to observe Flame carefully.
Still sleep eluded me. I decided not to try to force it, but rather to take advantage of my wakefulness by putting in a call to Tibet and trying to find out how soon my future might be removed from the past and restored to the present-—which at the moment was about seventy years in the future. I activated the wrist radio and buzzed Tibet.
“How do. How do.” Ti Nih Baapuh answered. “Who is call please?”
“It’s Steve, Ti Nih.” Who else did she think it could be?
“Hello-hello, Steve. Is nice you call. What new?”
“Nothing’s new. Everything’s old. That’s how it is when you get bogged down in history. Listen, let me talk to Dudley.”
“Sorry. Him no can come to talk with radio.”
“Why not? Is he sick?”
“Oh, yes. Him be very sick. Him no can get up.”
“What’s the matter with him?” I wanted to know.
“Him no can move. Him so sick he very dead.”
“What!!!” I was stunned. As the implications hit me I began to feel pretty sick myself. “Are you telling me that Dudley Nightshade died?” I asked.
“Is so. Him all dead. Too much humpty-humpty head lady, him go poof. Her desolate. Say him best even sick. Say she try cure him. Not know cure very fatal. Now him no move no matter how she sex-sex.”
“When did this happen?”
“Few hour ago. Him happy ’cause he get Papa jump you again. Him celebrate with head lady. She notice him not move much. She think first it because him American. Then she look and him very dead. Big smile. Him go with joy.”
Damn you Dudley! I cursed him savagely to myself. I hope you rot in hell, you lecherous louse! Why did you have to die now when I was almost home free? Couldn’t you control your libido until you brought me all the way back? Now I could be stranded in the Klondike forever!
“Listen, Ti Nih,” I said desperately. “Can’t you get your father to jump me one more time?”
“Him no very willing,” she told me. “Him upset because you friend die immoral. Him no approve. Also Papa no like Chinese what come. Them ask questions and chop-chop body-—-call autopsy-—to see what capitalist American doing. Them give Papa hard time. And Papa no like you other friend Put-Put-man.”
“Charles Putnam? Is he there?”
“Him get here right after Dudley die."
“Let me talk to him.”
“Him arguing with Papa now. I see he talk to you.”
There was a short silence and then I heard Putnam’s voice. “Steve? What are you up to now?” Crisp and official and not too friendly.
“I’m stranded in the Klondike gold rush,” I told him.
“Hell, I never authorized that!”
“Sorry about that, Chief,” I told him drily.
“You better get your tail back here, Victor. I’m catching all kinds of hell from State and Central Intelligence about your shenanigans. The Chinese are about at the end of their tether. They don’t buy any of this. It’s boiling down to where I can’t shield you any more. So you just get your tail back here and no excuses!”
“I’m willing,” I told him. “But it’s up to your end. With Dudley dead, you’re the only one who can pressure Papa Baapuh into getting me back.”
“The old man and I don’t hit it off very well,” Putnam admitted. “He’s stubborn as hell. Keeps muttering about his daughter. Doesn’t seem to want you back because of her. You pull one of your usual flubs with the kid, Victor?”
“I was seduced.” It was no time to be gallant.
“I’ll bet! Well, I’m working on him, but it looks like it’s going to take awhile. Try and see if you can’t stay out of trouble while you’re waiting, will you?”
I promised I would and we broke the connection.
Brooding, I went back to sleep again. It was mid-morning before I awoke. I got dressed and went downstairs. Flame was waiting for me to go out and have breakfast with her.
“Well, Boss, what do you want me to do today?” I asked her over coffee.
“Go over to the mine and help Belch. He’ll find something to keep you busy.”
I finished my coffee and walked over to the Lucky Seven. Belch was in the little shed behind the gate which served him as an office. A shotgun was propped up on his desk pointing out the window and covering the gateway.
“Good you come.” Belch belched a friendly belch. “I was gettin’ hungry. You can stand shotgun whilst I go grab a bite.”
I replaced him behind the desk and watched through the window as he strolled up the street to the saloon. No sooner had the swinging doors flapped shut behind him than another figure appeared and started sloshing through the mud towards the entrance to the mine. As he came closer, I saw that it was Dangerous Dagwood.