"Hurry back and tell 'em you were mugged in the park," Lafayette suggested. "Just in case."
"Hey," the septuagenarian protested. "You will exercise due care and all like it says, won't you, fella?"
"Count on me, Pop," Lafayette reassured him; as the car stopped and the doors jolted open, he extracted himself from the plump matrons and headed for the door marked Tire Stair—Emergency Only.'
After an interminable descent, Lafayette saw the glow of daylight below and soon reached a littered floor with a big blue cold-drink machine, and stepped out into a narrow alley. He turned right and quickly emerged on the street he had seen from his room. Marv was no longer in sight, but Lafayette went across anyway and meandered casually to the corner where he had seen his erstwhile comrade. He found nothing but a candy-bar wrapper to indicate that anyone had loitered there. His eye was caught by a neon sign reading COLD BEER glowing in a dusty window across the narrow street. He started across, adroitly dodging a cab which took an abrupt right turn, nearly grazing his shins, and pushed through the heavy plate-glass door into a dim interior redolent of generations of slopped-over beers. He took a table and two deep breaths before a large man in an apron like a four-master's tops'l over an expansive paunch bellied up to the table, shifted a toothpick in a meaty face, and said, "You want sumpin'?"
"Why, no," Lafayette said seriously. "Actually I just stepped in to get out of the blizzard." He had dumped his package on the table before him. Now he stripped off the tape and tore away the brown wrapper, exposing an inner wrapping, removed that and was looking at a stack of fourteen-by-twenty-two glossies. The top print, in gaudy color, showed an ornately decorated interior, all red-and-white marble and gold wainscoting. He shuddered and examined the figures in the foreground. One, standing in advance of the others, was undoubtedly Frumpkin, in black no longer. He was wearing a species of brocaded toga, somewhere between a pope's robes and Roman senator's bedsheet. To his left was Daphne, looking relatively drably clad in a gown of shimmering silver. The others were strangers, except for a fellow who looked remarkably like Marv occupying a pew for one, raised above floor level in the background.
The other prints showed other angles of the same ceremony, except for the last, which showed a gold-uniformed Frumpkin standing in a stiff Napoleon pose amid the ruins of what seemed to be the same rococo hall.
The big man was still hovering. He shot a glance at the translucent window with REEB DLOC on it, and muttered. "Wise guy, hah? I got a good mind to throw you right back out in your own snowdrift, crum-bum, you get smart with me, which I own this here dump." He reached for O'Leary's collar with a hairy arm bigger than most peoples' leg. Lafayette dodged casually, fixed a steely gaze on the red-rimmed eyes of the owner-bouncer.
"Raf tras spintern," he said distinctly. "Raf tras spoit."
The big fellow checked his grab and rearranged the salt and pepper shakers and paper napkin dispenser instead. "Whyn't you say so?" he demanded, then straightened up, looking over O'Leary's head. "Sorry, sir. Been on-station too long, I guess. Kinda forgot the routine. You wanna wait right here, I'll have a contact man here in a sec." He backed away from the Presence, then fled.
"I see you and Special Ed are old pals," a chipper feminine voice spoke up at O'Leary's ear. He jumped, then turned to see a small dark-haired girl with a neat figure in a tight electric-blue dress. She had a pretty face, marred by an excess of eyelash goo and an oversize slash of gore-red lip rouge. She took the seat opposite him and dumped a wicker handbag the size of a small suitcase on the table, shoving the photographs aside.
"Hi," she went on breathlessly. "I'm Mickey Jo. You sure put the fear into old Ed, all right. Who are ya? Ain't seen you around here before, I don't think."
"Actually," O'Leary said carefully, assessing this new player moved onto the board, "I've never been here before."
"New on the job?" Mickey Jo frowned in sympathetic inquiry.
"Not on the job," Lafayette replied. "Just trying to find Daphne and go home."
"What's Daphne?" the girl asked.
"Not 'what', Lafayette corrected. " 'Who'. She's a very beautiful young woman, and my wife."
"If that's a hint to me to take off," Mickey Jo said regretfully, "I get it. Just sat down to rest the dogs, anyway. Well, nice meeting you, Mr ..."
"Brown," he supplied. "Lafayette Brown. Sir Lafayette Brown in fact. Don't go. I wasn't hinting. I never hint. I come right out and say things."
Mickey Jo hesitated. "If you're sure ..."
"I'm sure," Lafayette stated firmly, realizing he meant it. "Frankly, I'm lonely. Stay and talk to me. Have a drink?"
The girl tossed her head half-defiantly, half-decisively. She resumed her seat and at once emitted a short, piercing whistle, directed at the proprietor still hovering in the background. He hurried over.
"Draw two, Ed," Mickey Jo ordered crisply. "The real stuff, not that Milwaukee soda water."
"Well, Mick, you know I always serve nothin' but the best to my prime customers," Ed said in a hurt tone. He made a ritual dab at the tabletop with a gray rag and departed at a trot, to return at once with two sudsy schooners.
"Now," Mickey Jo said comfortably, "tell me all about this Daphne dame—excuse me—your wife, I mean. I suppose she's one o' these classy broads which she don't ever let nothing slip—or slip past, eh, sir?"
"Just call me Laff," Lafayette said tonelessly. "You remind me of a girl who used to call me that."
"Laugh? That's a heck of a name, no offense," the girl commented between drags on her tankard. O'Leary tried his beer and found it to be an excellent, nutty brew. He took a long, healing gulp and his morale improved at once. Outside, he noticed, it was almost twilight.
"Daphne and I were sitting in the palace garden, just chatting about old times," Lafayette began his recital, "and I happened to be looking at the stars; noticed if you changed things a little the so-called Great Bear would look a lot like a unicorn or something. So ..." he paused. "So I just twiddled with it a little, without any intention whatever of tampering, you understand— and the next thing I knew we were in the middle of a cloudburst. We ran for it—and somehow got separated. I mean, there was only one door she could have gone through, and it led nowhere—or only to the stairs to the Dread Tower, I mean. I went up and ran into a couple of sharpies from Central, who tried to kidnap me. But I forgot: before that, I was grabbed by a couple of thugs named Marv and Omar and dragged into the presence of Lord Trog. He told me I was in Aphasia and nobody had seen Daphne. And the palace was in ruins. You see, it was almost Artesia; just the same, except nothing was the same—if you know what I mean."
"I'm sorry, Laugh, I don't—see what you mean, I mean," Mickey Jo responded. "It sounds like you been hit on the dome once too often, maybe. So let's forget all that, and just talk about us."
" 'Us'?" Lafayette echoed wonderingly. "What about us? I just met you, I hardly know you—"
"And all I know about you," Mickey Jo cut in, "is you got a chipped knob. But what the hell, the night is young, like they say, and so are we—so why be choosy? You can buy me a nice dinner in a first-class restaurant, and we'll go from there."
"I don't know if I have any cash," Lafayette said doubtfully, patting pockets. He brought out a crumpled Artesian ten spot, a corroded copper coin, some gray lint, and the flat-walker.
"... repeat, OK, Slim?" its tiny voice peeped, even fainter now. "You're way overdue at the field office. You get that address OK? One two eight South Canal, one flight up. Over to you, Slim."