"Get back, fool!" he croaked. "You don't know the potency of the forces with which you seek to meddle."
"No, but I intend to find out, with your help," Lafayette returned, sounding more cheerful than he felt. Only a dozen feet from Frumpkin now, he could see a hinged panel set in the rough flooring between the black and cobwebbed joists. Frumpkin returned his attention to his efforts to open the rusted hasps as Lafayette gained the narrow platform. He looked down. Marv was at the base of the ladder, looking upward with an unreadable expression on his meaty features.
"Better hold on a minute, Al," Marv called in a cautious tone, as if he didn't want to overhear himself. "Fella wants to see ya."
"I can't guarantee anything, Marv," Lafayette replied. Off to his right, Frumpkin had succeeded in raising the panel in the plank floor above him and was starting through. For a moment O'Leary considered using the flat-walker to present the megalomaniacal Man in Black with a shock when he completed his climb up into the sealed chamber.
Nope, he told himself firmly. I decided to stop using it, and I'm sticking with that decision.
"Hey, you, feller, come on down here now," a beefy voice called from below. Lafayette looked down, saw the gross, hounds-tooth-check figure of Chuck glaring up at him over the sights of a fat black automatic pistol which he was holding with both hands in a position which allowed O'Leary to see the rifling inside the barrel.
"I'm sorry about your costumes, Chuck," Lafayette improvised, "but it was an emergency. Would you mind aiming that thing elsewhere? You couldn't want any holes in your fancy suit, remember."
The pistol came down. Chuck tried an ingratiating expression reminiscent of Dracula approaching a bared throat.
"Guess you and me better talk," he said. "Never mind about Ga—or Frumpkin I guess you call him. We can see about him later on."
"We'll talk, all right," O'Leary said hotly. "Start with the gray room: Where is it? What were you doing there?"
"Never played no Gray Room, Mister," Chuck demurred. "Lousy name for a night spot, anyways."
"I saw you there," Lafayette charged. "You looked as if you were taking orders from Frumpkin. Where is it?"
"You claim you seen me there, you orter know where it's at," Chuck pointed out reasonably.
"Where it is," O'Leary corrected briefly. "I wasn't really there; I just saw it."
"Oh, you have visions do ye?" Chuck chortled. "Sorry, bub, I can't use no palm-reader in the act."
"Don't you go going soft, Charles," the harsh voice of Chick came from offside. Lafayette looked over his shoulder and saw the hard-faced woman, her wig awry, climbing to the scaffolding a few feet away. She gripped a small nickle-plated .735, aimed at Lafayette's right knee.
"Go on, git down there," the lady added. "And this corn-popper ain't much, but at this range it'd smart some."
Chapter Fifteen
Back on the ground, Lafayette went along apparently docilely when Chuck's pudgy but surprisingly powerful fingers clamped on his arm and urged him toward a nearly intact tent of an offensive ocher-pink color, with contrasting patches. Inside, in an odor of hot rubberized canvas, he accepted a seat on the edge of a folding director's chair with MINE lettered on its back. The showman took a position behind an un-painted board-and-orange-crate desk, the big .45 in front of him. Chick posted herself beside the fly, gun in hand.
"We're finely beginning to get a handle onta you, Mr. Whatever-Your-Name-ls," Chuck stated in the tone of a magistrate introducing a dull stretch on his calendar. "We know now we got to take you inta account. Leastways, Chief says so; and I'm a kump'ny man, so just you lay it out plain: What's your angle in this?"
"I have to find Daphne and get back home with her," Lafayette said tightly. "That's all. You can keep the rest."
"Don't go tellin' me what I can keep," Chuck instructed Lafayette coldly. "Don't get no idear you're in the saddle here; onney you got a couple tricks Chief wants to find out about, is all's kep you alive up to now; so spill it: How'd you tie in to the Prime Generator?"
"Never heard of it," Lafayette said.
"Now, don't go givin' us that old crap," Chick commanded in an irascible tone. "We ain't got all the mornin'."
"I thought it was afternoon," Lafayette said.
"Don't matter none," Chuck stated. "Mornin' or evenin', you're openin' up now."
"I would," O'Leary assured his captors, "if I knew what to tell you. All I know is, I don't know what's going on, and haven't, since I did that dumb trick with the tail of the Unicorn."
"Ain't no sich of a thang's a unnercorn, not in this whole lamina," Chuck cut in.
"Not a real unicorn," O'Leary explained. "The constellation, you know—the same one some people call Ursa Major, or the Great Wain."
"Now let's not get inta that level o' energy transfer," Chuck admonished. "Stick to plain old A-level stuff fer now. Chief'll wanna know all about the G-scale stuff later."
"I didn't do it intentionally," Lafayette explained. "I was just musing, sort of."
"Well, we ain't amused," Chick put in. "Come on, Charles, might's well take this feller on in to Field HQ; we ain't gonna get anyplace with him. Let's face it, we ain't got the education to ask the right questions."
"Guess yer right," Chuck conceded. "Jest figgered it'd be kind of a nice note in the old Performance Record if we could take Chief the whole story all wrapped up."
"Get us kilt or worse, tryna second-think old Chief," Chick stated bluntly.
"Quite right, my dear," Frumpkin's voice interrupted as the Man in Black strolled casually into the tent. "Actually," he went on, "I've decided to remain at this locus until I have all the facts from our Mr. O'Leary here. You two may go along now. I shall conduct the interrogation in my own way."
"Tole ya, Charles," Chick's metallic voice was informing her partner as they exited clumsily, Chuck muttering under his breath.
"Have no fear," Frumpkin said over his shoulder. "Your apprehension of this fellow will be noted in the record." Frumpkin turned casually toward the rude desk, but before he had taken a step toward it, O'Leary had reached him and taken a secure grip on the elegant official's neck.
"We'll talk, all right," Lafayette said. "But you'll be answering the questions. Start with that fiasco back in Nicodaeus' old lab: What were you and your sidekick Belarius V doing there? And why did you try to grab me? Where's Daphne?"
"Unhand me, Lafayette," Frumpkin ordered in a strained voice as he attempted to reach inside his well-tailored black tunic, a move which Lafayette countered by seizing the arm and bringing it up behind his would-be captor's back. Seeming to take no notice, Frumpkin continued: "You gain nothing by submitting my person to indignities, my lad. Inasmuch as I'm well aware you've not the necessary toughness of spirit to commit murder in cold blood, we may as well conduct ourselves as gentlemen."
"My blood could warm up," O'Leary informed his captive, "unless you tell me right now what's happened to Daphne." He increased pressure on both neck and arm, eliciting a sharp squeak from the no longer haughty Man in Black.
"Kindly accept my assurances that I know nothing of this Daphne persona to whom you allude," Frumpkin blurted, attempting to twist free of O'Leary's grip, which he accordingly tightened.
"Better not struggle," Lafayette advised the smaller man concernedly. "I don't like the sound of that shoulder joint."