"Blood? Explain, or you vill be executed."
"Yessa, blood. You know the Aryans have sucha wonderful blood, better than other people? They are going to giva you transfusions from theesa littla animals, to make you stronga like them."
"O-o-oh! Vy didn't you say so? Vot are you vaiting around for? On your vay! Hurry! And don't let dose animals loose, or you vill be executed!"
They walked on through the cemeterial streets for a couple more silent blocks before being challenged again. This time there were three Aryans: a commander in the chain mail and white blackcrossed surcoat of a Teutonic knight, flanked by a pair of horned Siegfrieds.
D'Amelio went through his spiel about the high command's plan for improving the blood of the super-race. The result was different.
"Hm-m-m," said the knight, "let me see." He leaned forward to scrutinize the beasts. The saber-tooth may have taken a dislike to the Aryan's smell, for Smiley laid his ears back and snarled with a sound like the crackle of a high-voltage arc.
The knight retreated a hasty step."You had better keep them under control, sub-men!" barked the paladin."If I had been so much as scratched, you would have been executed! Now I see that one is a mythical African ape, a kulukamba, and the other an extinct American carnivore, Smilodon californicus. You cannot fool the German culture! These are not Aryan animals. The first is from the Negro continent, and the second from the Jewish continent, America. You think our leaders would inject us with the blood of Negroid and Jewish animals? Fools, you will be executed anyway. Seize them!"
"Who, us?" said the Siegfrieds in rather small voices.
"Ja! Sie!"
Nash did not want to sic his beasts on the warriors at this stage if it could be avoided. While the subordinates tensed themselves to spring, and d'Amelio's free hand stole to his hilt, Alicia's clear voice blasted the night: "You lousy stinking obscenity swine, if you touch us I'll Aryanize you all right! I'll—"
"Madame!" cried the knight, angry but somehow less truculent."You must not! Such language is forbidden by the regulations!"
Then Nash remembered: "Step on their toes until they apologize!"
"Ha-ha!" he shouted in a nasty, mirthless laugh."Talk of executing me! Expect me to commit suicide?"
"What do you mean?" gasped the knight.
"I," announced Nash in the tense, pharyngeal tones of an aroused Aryan, "am Ritter Johann Glück von Nasch, the new executioner!"
"Guk," said the knight."But... but where is your ax?"
"What do you think these are?" Nash pointed to his beasts.
"O-o-oh! Ich verstehe! Aber, warum sprechen sie Englisch?"
Nash's heart skipped a beat before he got the answer to that one too: "Because that's the only language these animals understand. Now will you go about your proper duties, or must I report you?"
The Teutonic knight at this point exhibited a marked lack of enthusiasm for Nash's company. He murmured apologies, bowed from the hips, saluted, and clanked off. When the darkness swallowed him and his cohorts, Nash and his assistants heard the Aryan trio break into a run.
D'Amelio laughed."You are gooda, Chevalier. Thosa poor little supermen, I am sorry for them!"
"Give the credit to Miss Woodson's lack of inhibitions," said Nash, quickening his pace."In a while it'll occur to them to go round to headquarters to ask if there really is a new executioner, and then Manhattan'll be too hot for us."
"It's not what you'd call frigid now," added Alicia.
Central Park was so dark under the starless sky that it took them half an hour of bush-beating to find the lake.
"More Aryansa," whispered d'Amelio.
Nash peered out from behind a tree, and made out men scattered along the shore."Seems to be a cordon of 'em clear around the lake," he murmured."Guess we'd better go around to where Shapiro's boathouse is."
They wended their slow way. The beasts became difficult: Kulu wanted to climb trees, and Smiley sniffed and tugged at the scent of squirrels and other small game. Once the latter got his chain tangled in a bush, and while Nash was unsnarling it the big cat slipped away on his belly.
Nash called: "Ab—ac—lie down, Smiley! Alicia, what do you—"
"Accumbe!" cried the girl. After some hunting they found Smiley crouched under the shrubbery; he whined with displeasure when Nash hauled on his chain, but came.
They found the path leading to the boathouse and walked boldly down it. At the first challenge, Nash barked that he was von Nasch, the new executioner—
"Ho, ho! Otto, hierher!" There was a stir; more shadowy forms with winged and horned iron hats drifted up."Der Kerl behaupt, das er der neuer Henker ist!"
"Vunderful," rumbled a voice."A fine shtory. De only flaw is dat I da new executioner been!" Nash saw that the speaker was a stocky man who leaned on a huge ax, and had his other arm around the neck of another Aryan who punctuated his sentences with a girlish giggle."Doch, I make you apprentice. I give you vun lesson, very short, very sharp. It is too bad you vill not be able to take more—"
The Aryans gathered around them like a wave about to break. Nash heard the jingle as d'Amelio dropped the ape's chain, and the wheep of emerging sword and dagger. He released the saber-tooth."Smiley! Kulu! Carpe! Carpe!"
The kulukamba gave a short, piercing scream; the cat roared; a gun crashed somewhere and lit up the scene for a blink. Nash drove his rapier through Otto's chest while the latter was still starting to swing his ponderous ax. He almost stuck another figure before he realized that it was Alicia, hacking away with an Aryan sword.
The confusion opened out; the three non-Aryans found themselves alone with a few stiffs. More guns banged, and the shouts, roars, and screams faded into the distance.
One rowboat stood on the boathouse apron; they tumbled into it and pushed off."You row, d'Amelio," said Nash.
"Butta, signor, a littla weaka man like me—"
"Row, damn it! I've got to work this watch."
The condottiere put his massive shoulders into it, and the boat whizzed through the ripples. Nash directed it toward the desert island.
"It's beginning to get light," said Alicia.
"Gosh! Have we been all night? We'll have a swell chance of getting away in daytime."
"Maybe somebody'll hide us," suggested Alicia, not too hopefully.
"Maybe. More on your right, d'Amelio."
Nash was not sure that they had entered the smooth strip that marked the intersection of Tukiphat's hollow sphere of refraction and the surface of the lake, until the surroundings were suddenly and swiftly stretched out of all recognizable shape. D'Amelio dropped his oars and crossed himself.
"Keep on," Nash ordered him, and pressed the stud on the side of the stop watch. At once the environment returned, if not to normal, at least to a recognizable distortion thereof. Tukiphat's island was visible as if seen through a concave lens. A few more strokes carried them through the refractory zone altogether, and another half-minute's rowing to the island itself.
The keel grated softly against the sand, and before the boat had stopped, Alicia had jumped out into inch-deep water and was pulling on the painter. D'Amelio scrambled after, and then Nash.
The last whispered: "He's supposed to be contemplating his navel beside the entrance to his cave. That's around the hill. Damn it, d'Amelio, stop that jingling!"
They padded noiselessly over the sand. A dark spot came into view on the side of the knoll, and beside it could be discerned an amorphous gray shape the size of a seated man.
A sound that to Nash's excited imagination resembled the explosion of a string of firecrackers, made him jump, till he realized that it was the slight crackle of Alicia's sheet of typewriter paper.