"I'm Lord Trog and I'm the Chief Honcho around these here parts, just in case you don't know it, Al," the whiskery chieftain growled, squinting at O'Leary. "And I don't put up with no guys on my trusty guard staff which they ain't trusty. So—throw 'em away, fellows," he commanded the duty squad. "These here two miscreants," he clarified, with a nod at Marv and Omar.
"Don't bother to shoot 'em up much, just yet, but a stretch in the lower dungeon will do 'em a lotta good, discipline-wise." He waved a calloused hand in a negligent gesture. "Take 'em away."
Gosh, O'Leary thought confusedly, it worked, sort of! Maybe the old Psychic Energies are flowing again. That means ... well, I'm not exactly sure what it means, he conceded, but now that I've got Trog's mind off having me shot, the first thing I've got to do is find Daphne. She must have gone up those steps ...
"Where is the Countess?" O'Leary demanded sternly of Lord Trog, who, he thought, bore a considerable resemblance, under all that hair, to Yockabump, the court jester—and to Sprawnroyal of the Acme Novelty Company. The whiskers parted in a cavernous yawn.
"Back to that, huh?" His Lordship grunted. He looked about him as if suspicious of eavesdroppers.
"Level with me now, Bub, and maybe you can save yourself some trouble—and make a better-looking corpse, too: Are you really the fell necromancer Allegorus, like Marv and Omar said?"
"Where did they get that silly idea?" O'Leary demanded.
"Well, after all, ya did materialize outa thin air yonder in the Dread Tower, din't ya?"
"I came down the steps and they were waiting for me," Lafayette corrected. "Anyway, what's so dread about the Tower? It's just an old ruin." He smiled condescendingly. "I just ducked inside to get out of the weather, as it happens. So what?"
"You mean—you admit you were beyond the forbidden door, up inna top o' the Tower?" His Lordship drew a ragged circle in the air in front of him.
"A few steps up, was all," O'Leary explained. "You see, Daphne must have gone up there—unless Marv and Omar got her, too," he amended.
"If she did, pal, she's a goner. Too bad. We got a like critical shortage of dames here just now. What's she look like?"
Lafayette indicated Daphne's graceful contours with his hands. "Dark hair," he added. "Prettiest face in the known universe."
"Cheeze," Lord Trog mourned. "Wit' them statistics, she mighta qualified for my personal favor."
"I guess it's just as well she went up," O'Leary concluded. "What's up there that's so scary?"
"If you're really Allegorus, you already know," Trog reasoned. "And if you ain't, why should I give away any info?"
"It might weigh in your favor at your trial," O'Leary suggested. "What are you doing here in the palace gardens anyway?"
"Keepin' a eye on the Dread Tower, o' course, Al," Trog said as one stating the obvious. "And a good thing, it looks like, seein's you picked now to come out on one o' yer trouble-makin' raids."
"It appears," O'Leary said, feeling suddenly tired, "that you're in need of psychiatric attention, milord. Why don't you just go away quietly now, before your keepers find you; and I'll try to smooth things over with Her Majesty—as soon as you release Daphne unharmed, that is."
"Sounds like a square deal, Bub," Trog replied, showing his teeth in a wide grin. "Onney there's one little problem area: I ain't seen no Daphne, nor not even a Piggy-Lou."
"Stubborn, eh?" Lafayette said grimly. "You'll sing a different tune when you're clapped in irons with the royal PPS working you over with the latest in ballbearing joint-presses and the fully automated hydraulic rack, not to mention the computer-controlled foot-roasters."
"Sure, I heard all that old jazz before," Trog said indifferently. "But you're in a funny spot to be threatening me wit' the attentions of a Physical Persuasion Specialist, which I got a pretty good boy on my staff my own self. Now, cut the comedy and give me the straight dope: Do you admit you're Allegorus the Awful, or don't ya?"
"Maybe you'd better tell me a little more about this fellow you're so scared of," O'Leary suggested. "Then I'll tell you if I'm him or not."
"Me, I'm a reasonable guy," Trog said, indicating himself with a grimy thumb. "Maybe you just like to hear people talk about ya, huh? Got a little ego problem, eh? Well, I'll play along: Everybody knows he comes out every three hundred years or like that, stirs up a bunch of trouble and then goes back inna tower for another three centuries—an' nobody never sends in no eats or drinks, so he always comes out wit a appetite on him like three harvest hands; and he likes beans—hu-mern beans."
"Is that all?" O'Leary demanded sarcastically. "Sounds like a pretty dull fellow."
"Not when he gets wound up good, he ain't," Trog declared defensively.
"Anyway, I'm not him," O'Leary stated with finality. "And even if I were, what right do you and your gang of thugs have to interfere with the movements of a nobleman of the realm?"
"You was seen goin' into the Dread Tower, which nobody don't go in there except old Allegorus hisself!"
"I was merely taking shelter from the rain," Lafayette countered. "It was the only building in sight, so naturally—"
"Rain, huh? Well, Bub, you coulda picked a better alibi. All Aphasia's been in the like grip of a drought these last six years or more," Trog stated flatly, reaching down as he spoke to take a pinch of dust from the ground beside his chair. He rolled it between his gnarled fingers, letting it dribble away in a fine stream which spread and dissipated like smoke before it reached the ground. Lafayette looked down and saw dry mud caked on his elegant purple patent-leather court pumps, which were firmly planted in drifted dust. Not so much as a stunted green weed testified to the former existence of water here. Still, his shirt clung, sodden, to his back, though the air seemed noticeably warmer now.
"Oh, yeah?" he said in an attempt at a casual tone. "In that case, how'd I get soaked?"
"Marv and Omar figgered you'd fell in the well you must have inside the tower," Trog said. "Maybe that's why you come out—you was shook up from the misadventure which it coulda been fatal all alone in the dark and all."
"You referred to some place called Aphasia," O'Leary commented, "I thought Aphasia was a mental state." Then he added in a desperate attempt at rationality, "Well, maybe it is at that."
"Oh, I get it," Trog said, "ya poor slob, you're off your chump, huh? Well, Lord Trog ain't one to be too tough on a guy which he's afflicted of Allah. So relax, pal, and I'll leave my official leech have a look at your dome."
"I don't want any leech, official or otherwise, to look at my dome," Lafayette came back hotly. With an effort, he calmed himself. Nothing to get excited about, O'Leary, he told himself sternly.
Somehow, he explained to himself patiently, somehow, I've done it again—gotten myself involved in another of those ridiculous situations where everybody thinks I'm somebody else and nobody is who he seems to be. And it's not fair! This time I wasn't tinkering with gadgets swiped from the Probability Lab at Central, or practicing focusing the Psychic Energies, or meddling in Nicodeaus' lab, or anything else ...
"No spells, now, Bub!" the hoarse voice of Lord Trog broke into Lafayette's self-instructive reverie. "Nor no prayers, neither," he added. "Don't worry, you'll get a fair trial and a relatively painless demise. Nobody ain't never said Lord Trog don't give a fella a even break, even if it's a compound fracture o' the femur." The barbaric lord snickered at his own wit, and shifted in his chair, which creaked ominously under his weight.
I know that chair, O'Leary realized abruptly. It's one of the ones that used to be in the Great Hall, spaced between the mirrors! So these ruins really are the palace!