"Whatever you like," Marv assured him. "If you prefer buckets o' emrals and rubies and ten-dollar bills, Al, he can—" Marv broke off as Lafayette jabbed him in the side with an elbow, at the same time easing him away from the door.
"Marv was just kidding around, Sheriff," he said. "He doesn't have any gold bathtubs on him—or even any buckets. Of course, he might turn up the odd sawbuck you boys missed when you cleaned us out."
"I never missed no sawbuck," Tode replied hotly. "When I shake a feller down, I don't miss nothing. Hey, where you going?" He concluded, as Lafayette, easing sideways, passed from the officer's field of vision.
Or almost nothing, Lafayette told himself, checking his secret pocket for the flat-walker, finding it still safely tucked away. Not that he'd have known it was important, even if he'd found it, he reflected.
The sheriff was now bawling for someone named Cecil, turning after each yell to order Lafayette to stand "... whur I can see ye!" Marv eyed Lafayette anxiously while making soothing sounds directed to the suspicious sheriff.
"It's all right, Shurf," Marv reassured the cop. "Old Al's kinda shy is all. He's right here a-hiding in the corner. No need to do nothing hasty, Shurf, sir."
Cecil arrived, looming six inches over his chief's considerable bulk. "What's up, boss? These here jailbirds try something funny?"
"One of 'em's hiding, Cease," Tode explained. "Says he's shy, but I don't like it, a feller just kind of sliding sideways out o' sight whilst I'm talking to him. Ain't respeckful."
"Durn right, Shurf," Cease replied eagerly. "Just leave me in there to take a few minutes to teach 'em a few manners, Colby County style."
"No need, Mr. Cecil, sir," Marv cried. "We got more manners'n we can use now, don't we, Al?" He looked imploringly toward O'Leary who, flat-walker in hand, was facing the masonry wall.
"Take it easy, Marv," Lafayette said reasonably. "I'll be back for you in a few minutes." As he activated the Ajax device, he heard the rattle of a key, and from the corner of his eye saw the heavy steel-barred door swing in, slightly obscured by a haze which thickened to an opaque blackness shot through with tiny darting lights—random high-speed cosmic rays striking the retina, as Sprawnroyal had once explained.
As from a great distance, O'Leary heard Cecil's bellow. "Hey, Shurf, one of these crud-bums has busted out!"
The light-shot darkness lightened to watery gray, and through an open doorway O'Leary saw the Man in Black speaking urgently to a coarse-looking middle-aged woman, though his words were inaudible. Lafayette approached, looked into the vast, dim room he had seen before. Far away across a faded pseudo-oriental carpet, Daphne—he was almost sure—stood beside a bric-a-brac-cluttered end table, her shoulders slumped dejectedly. Then she looked up: It was Daphne. Lafayette started through the door, encountered an impalpable resistance against which he lunged in vain. Frumpkin looked up at O'Leary, at once dismissed the frumpy woman, and started toward him. Daphne hurried forward to come up behind Frumpkin.
"Clobber him, Daph!" O'Leary wished frantically. But Daphne stopped and spoke quietly:
"You promised, milord." Fumpkin whirled and snarled something at her. As Lafayette tried desperately to push through the barrier, the pale light faded to impenetrable darkness and profound silence. He pressed forward—and the barrier melted.
Then the darkness cleared and he was looking at a brown-painted concrete-block wall with a tattered and fly-specked poster exhorting the viewer to reelect 'Hoppy' Tode as Sheriff of Colby County—a document, Lafayette reflected, which, though unprepossessing, had apparently proven effective. Then he noticed the sheriff himself standing a few feet away, staring through the barred door through which Cecil's complaint was still issuing:
"... let one of these here sneak thief s break outa our jail! Jukes ain't going to like it, Shurf, and you gotta election coming up!"
Tode turned casually, then started violently at the sight of O'Leary standing nearly at his elbow. He tugged his hogleg from its holster and aimed it at Lafayette's face.
"Jist you hold it right there, feller!" he yelled. Then through the bars to Ceciclass="underline"
"It's OK, Cease, I got the skunk! Get out here and get the cuffs on him! Then we got to find out where the secret tunnel is at. Where is it at, boy?" He switched his attention from Cecil to Lafayette. "You gonna tell me polite, or has Cease got to loosen you up?" He cocked the pistol. "You can have it hard or you can have it easy; up to you, wise guy." He raised his voice. "Snap it up, Cease, my trigger finger is getting twitchy!"
Lafayette shrank back against the wall, speaking soothingly to Tode as the pistol's bore seemed to expand to the size of a tunnel.
"Here, you," Tode yelled. "Don't go pulling no tricks on me, you low-down!" The detonation of the .44 was deafening, but the slug hissed past Lafayette's ear, smacked the wall, and whined off into the distance. The light-shot darkness was closing in again. Disoriented in the sudden gloom, O'Leary took a step and stumbled; then he seemed to be falling freely, end-over-end. He yelled, but heard no sound. His breathing was getting labored. Slowly, orientation returned; he groped with his feet, felt a springy surface, and took a tentative step. He seemed for a moment to glimpse the gray room, then lunged forward—or in some direction—tripped, and fell headlong into glaring light and a half-familiar odor of office supplies and duplicating fluid. The floor was smooth and cold, regulation asphalt tile in nine-inch squares, pale gray with pink and yellow flecks, he saw as his eyes reluctantly focused.
"Oh, brother," a dispirited female voice said from somewhere above: O'Leary lifted his head and saw a desk with a telephone, in- and out-baskets, and behind it a severely handsome woman of middle age, eyeing him sharply.
"Another nine-oh-two," she complained. "Why do all the hard-luck cases have to phase in here in Reception?" She was jabbing vigorously at a button set in a small console beside the desk.
"Just keep calm; a realignment team will be here in a moment," she said rapidly to O'Leary, jabbing even more urgently. As Lafayette was getting shakily to his feet, the doors across the gray-floored room burst open and an unperturbed medical type in starched whites came through, manipulating a hypodermic to expel air and totally ignoring O'Leary to address the woman:
"I assume, Miss Gorch, that you have some adequate reason for calling me away from a staff meeting with Class Four emergency signal." His eyes wandered to Lafayette.
"Who's this fellow, Mary-Ann? I suppose he's something to do with your disaster alert?"
"Damn right, Clyde," Miss Gorch replied, coming to her feet. "That last nut-case one of you big-domes accidentally shifted into HQ from some kind of orgy in a classified locus tried to attack me before I could even get his grab number! I'm taking no chances with this one!"
"Calmly, my dear girl, calmly," the official said, moving to confront Lafayette directly.
"I'll be calm when this rapist is in irons," Mary-Ann snapped.
"Wait a minute," O'Leary cut into the conversation. "I don't know who you think I am or what you claim I've done, but the fact is I'm Lafayette O'Leary, and I'm the victim of a whole series of disasters I had nothing to do with."
The man in white dismissed this with a wave of his hand. "Take him, men," he ordered; and his two aides sprang to grab Lafayette's arms and twist them into complicated come-along holds.
"Wait!" Lafayette yelled. "Don't do anything hasty! If you'll take a minute to check your records, you'll find I'm a legitimate part-time agent of Central!" He paused. "This is Central, isn't it?" he demanded. The man in white wagged his head solemnly.