“And what might they call you at home, lad?” Beardo queried.
“What?”
“What’s your name?”
“Francisco Rovzar. Uh, Frank ... what’s yours?” asked the young man.
“Puddin’ Tame,” answered Beardo gleefully. “Ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.” The old man giggled like a manic parrot, slapping his thigh with his free hand.
“Where is this?” asked Frank. “Am I in Munson?”
“Oh aye,” nodded Beardo. “Or under it, to be more precise. What port was it you sailed from, sir?”
“I’ve been drifting east on the Malachi from the Barclay Transport Depot.” Frank wished the old man would put away the knife. He didn’t like the look or smell of the ancient stone watercourse, and he wondered just how far under Munson he was.
“Barclay, eh? You a jailbird?”
Frank considered lying, but this old creature didn’t look like he had police connections; and Frank desperately needed friends and food and safe lodging. It’s almost certainly an error to trust this guy, he thought. But the next one I meet could be a lot worse.
“Yes,” he answered. “That is, I was a prisoner until about eight this morning.”
“Released you, did they?”
“No. I escaped. ”
Beardo started to laugh derisively, then noticed Frank’s scrapes and bruises and ruined ear. “You did?” he asked, surprised. “Well, you don’t often hear of that being done. Anyway, Frank, what I really want to ... uh ... ascertain, is whether or not you have a family that would be willing to pay an old gentleman like myself for your safe return. Do you understand?”
“No,” said Frank.
“Ransom, Frank, ransom. Do you have a rich family?” Before Frank could think of a safe answer, Beardo answered himself. “No, I suppose you don’t. If you did, they would have bought you out of Barclay. Or maybe the whole family got arrested, hmm?” Frank shook his head. “No family at all,” he said hopelessly. “My father was all I had, and the Transports shot him yesterday.”
“Ah!” said Beardo sadly, testing his knife’s edge with a discolored thumb. “I’m afraid that narrows down the possibilities for you, Frank my boy.”
Do I have the strength to fight old Puddin’ Tame? Frank asked himself. I don’t think I do. Maybe I could get into the water again.
“Your father and you were thieves, I take it?” Beardo asked, squinting speculatively at Frank’s bared throat.
“No!” Frank exclaimed, stung now in his much abused pride. “My father is ... was Claude M. Rovzar, the best portrait painter on this planet.” Beardo blinked. He was inclined to doubt this, but then saw the paint stains on the ragged remains of the youth’s shirt.
“You’re full of surprises, Frank,” he said. “All right, let’s say you are Rovzar’s son. Why would the Transports shoot Claude Rovzar?”
“My father was doing a portrait of Duke Topo yesterday. Transport troops invaded the palace. Costa was with them, and he killed the old Duke. The Transports grabbed my father and me, and my father resisted. They shot him.”
“You keep saying they shot him. You don’t mean that literally, do you?”
“Yes. There was more gunfire yesterday than I’ve ever heard of, anywhere, in a hundred years. Bombs, even.”
“Hmm,” grunted Beardo, scratching his furry chin. “There just might be something to all this.” He stood up, setting the bridge swaying. “One thing, anyway,” he said, “you’ve earned a reprieve.” He slapped his knife back into its sheath. “Come with me. We’ll get your wounds cleaned up and feed you. Then you can tell your story to a friend of mine.” Beardo picked up his lantern and Frank followed him into one of the tunnels.
Chapter 4
Alarmingly, the tunnel Beardo and Frank followed led down. The dim, shifty light cast by the old man’s lantern did little to dispel the darkness, and several times Frank heard anonymous scrabbling, splashing and low moans echo out of side corridors. Beardo held his drawn knife in his right hand and tapped it against the damp brick walls as he led Frank along. “Why are you doing that?” Frank whispered.
“It shows any hole-lurkers that we’re armed. Got to let ’em know we mean business.”
Good God, Frank thought. I wonder what sort of creatures lurk in these holes. In spite of himself, Frank began thinking of tentacles and green, fanged faces under old slouch hats.
“Good sirs! Good sirs!” came a wheezing voice from the blackness ahead, causing Frank to start violently. “A penny to see a dancing dog?”
“No,” rasped Beardo, advancing on the voice. “We don’t want to see a dancing dog.”
Frank peered ahead over Beardo’s shoulder and saw an old person of indeterminate sex, as withered and dark as a dried apple. The figure was slumped against the wall as though it had been thrown there, but one upraised skeletal hand held crossed sticks from which dangled a malodorous puppet. Frank looked more closely at it and saw that it was the dried corpse of a dog.
“Just keep walking,” whispered Beardo to Frank. “I’ve seen this one before.”
The old puppeteer began to sing, and Frank knew it was a woman. “Tirra lee, tirra lee, dance hound,” she crooned, and jiggled the horrible puppet merrily. Beardo stepped around her, smiling ingratiatingly. Frank followed, also attempting to smile.
“Beardo, by the stars!” the old woman exclaimed. “You’ll give me some money, now, eh?”
“Certainly, soon as I get some,” replied the old man, walking on down the tunnel and pulling Frank by the wrist.
“Soon as you get some? Damn your treacherous eyes!” the woman brayed. She struggled to her feet and stumbled after them for a few paces, flailing Frank’s back with her mummified dog, before sinking exhausted to the flagstones once more. “A penny to see a dancing dog?” she inquired of the darkness.
BEARDO’S home was an abandoned section of a spiral stairwell, left over from God-knew-what derelict subway system. The old man hung his lantern on a wall peg and touched a match to three kerosene lamps; the comparatively bright light enabled Frank to see the place in some detail. The shaft was roughly twenty-five feet from stone floor to boarded-up roof, and the ascending iron stairs circled the shaft twice before disappearing beyond the boards of the ceiling. Stacks of books, chipped statues, rusted ironmongery and clothes lined the outer edges of the stairs, with the other half, near the wall, left clear for ascending and descending. In the middle of the floor was a sunken tub in whose murky waters several large toads sported.
“Well, Frankie lad, what think you of the old homestead, eh?” asked Beardo, unscrewing the lid of a coffee jar.
Even in his cold, wet state, Frank could see that Beardo fairly radiated the homeowner’s pride, so he answered tactfully. “It’s beautiful, Mr. Tame. A regular palace. I didn’t know underground homes were so ... roomy.”
“Hardly any of them are, Frank. This is one of the finest dwellings, I believe, in all of Munson Understreet. Oh, and my name is Beardo, Beardo Jackson; that Puddin’ Tame business was a joke.” The old man put a pan of water over a gas flame, and then turned to Frank, “Well now, off with those old rags and hop in the tub.”
“The tub? But ... there’s frogs in the tub.”
“Toads. They thrive on the warm water. No poisonous frogs in my home. Hop in.”
Come on, Frank told himself. This tub is the least of your worries. He undraped the tatters of cloth from his shivering body and lowered himself gingerly into the tub, which actually was warm. He splashed around for a while with the toads and then crawled out, feeling, to his surprise, considerably better for the bath. The old man dressed and bandaged Frank’s bullet-torn right ear.