For a brief while, however, he delayed passing on that unhappy news, and the two supercriminals toasted each other in the sparkling beverage and recounted old exploits, lovingly discussed the fine points of technique, and fingered over with the appreciation some of the mightiest deeds in the annals of criminality. But, then, once the social amenities were exhausted, the Master Burglar came swiftly to the point.
"So." Fixing Hautley with an inquiring eye. "Now, not for the compliments exchange are you visiting old Dugan Motley, eh? No. Nor for the reminiscence doing, eh? Quicksilver, my friend, you have business in mind, right I?"
"Right," Quicksilver agreed.
"Then shall we to it, pell-mell?"
26
"DUGAN, OLD BOY," Hautley began without preamble, "you are the one man in the galaxy who tried to turn the Crown of Stars trick and came back with his throat uncut, even though you didn't manage to snaffle the gemmy thing. What I want to know is very simple. To Wit:
(1) How is the Crown guarded?
(2) How far did you get before you got caught?
(3) Why did you fail to get the Crown?
(4) How did you get caught at all, and you the snorpest scraggling fizzler that ever flad a flid in neck of the galaxy?"
The Motley paunch heaved alarmingly with a series of seismic chuckles that wreaked havoc with cheek, jowl and upper torso in general. Hautley patiently waited while the mirthquake slowly subsided. As it did, at length. Wheezing and wiping tears of honest laughter from his bright twinkling eyes, the fat old man tossed off a last goblet of Chateau Moskowitz '022 as lightly as if it were nothing of higher potency than a beaker of carrot juice.
"So, my japer, that be's the caper, heh? The great Quicksilver planning to 'crown' a bee-youtiful career by snipping the Crown o' Stars itself, heh, me bucko? Oh, har har har!"
"That's it, all right," Hautley said firmly. “And the question is, Dugan, will you help me by giving me all the dope I need to make a try? You're the only one that tried and got caught and still got away with an un-laser-broiled epidermis. I'd sure like to know what sort of guards I face, and exactly how you pulled off so brilliant a coup. Will you help me, Dugan?"
"Yes, yes," the old man grumbled, wagging his head dolefully, pendulous jowls a-wobbling. "Yes ... old Dugan tried, the poor fat old feller ... tired and failed, dog rot the frazzled luck o' the Motleys! But better luck and all success, sez I, to me friend, the so great Quicksilver, on top of whom's shoulders the cloak o' fame I worn so long has passed!"
Hautley's mirror-bright eyes flashed eagerly.
"Then you'll help me, Dugan?"
"Aye, me spruce young bucko!" the old pirate beamed, triggering off another series of seismic chuckles that went joggling and jiggling down his monstrously fat facade. "Happily I be to tell to you all the ins of this dog-rotted Crown, and especialy the, har har, outs!"
"Great! "That's fantabulous, Dugan! Let me get my aoundscriber.” Hautley dug out of his "business suit" a miniature tape-recorder and snapped it on.
"Well, to beginning with, mine friend the great Quicksilver," Dugan began pompously, "you see, the Crown is—is—"!
"That's enough free gas, Gutsy, hold it right there/"
Dugan's voice broke off with an astounded snort.
Quicksilver's hand flew towards his concealed weaponry, but the hard, cold, level voice from behind them said:
"Freeze, Blue Boy, unless you want a ventilated duodenum. Everybody stay nice an' quite, 'cause I got a itchy trigger-stud finger, and this thing might go off. That's right!"
The steely-hard, ice-cold voice came from approximately seven feet three inches behind him, Hautley's keen sense of hearing told him. That would place its point of origin directly in front of the third in the series of French doors he recalled seeing when first he had entered this first-floor room. Secure in the knowledge that no criminal could recognize him in his current disguise as one of the Blue Nomads of Cordova 6, Aristocrat Class, what with his indigo-hued facial pigmentation, his scalpwig of scarlet bristles, his padded pneumatic suit, etc., Hautley froze motionless and stared straight ahead of him into the mirror behind the wall of liquor bottles. There he could see the reflections of the intruders who had so rudely broken in upon his colloquy with the Master Burglar of Capitan.
His heart sank, momentarily. He saw—as he had half-expected to see—a grey-complexioned Orgotyr in fluorescent scarlet tights slashed with dead-black piping and puckered ruffs, a kind-faced Wollheimian in severely tailored spray-on slacks with triple-gathered dockets down the cuff, a plum-skinned Schloim from Pazatar 9, and a white-furred and dual-headed entity from Wolverine 3.
This, he reflected, philosophically, was certainly not one of his better days.
But he had no one to blame but himself. For he had carelessly neglected to take a precaution both elementary and extremely vital to one employed in his precarious profession—a precaution so natural to his thinking, that he had once put it down on paper for the delectation of future versicle-lovers in this meaner:
Observed: he who would die in bed
Keeps one eye fixed behind, one fixed ahead!
27
OF THE FOUR intruders, he noticed that one bore a General Nucleonics Mark IV coagulator. The second fiend was armed with a Cariocan boomerang-dirk of razor keen-edge knife-wood. The third aimed a deadly little ionic flasher the size of his little finger, but potent enough in destructive potential to reduce this princely structure to smouldering cinders.
The fourth hefted a cross-compensating megawatt neuronic-paralyzer tube with sawed-off muzzle and a Freggley-Smythe-Wickett Model Alpha-12 robot-aimed radar-sighted spotter.
Here’s a deadly crew, Hautley sighed.
Still seated immobile, he delicately and unobtrusively began shifting his weight in such a manner as to exert particular pressure on his left boot-heel, which was hollowed and contained therein a pressure-sensitive charge of flash-powder. Using the subtle arts of muscle-control Hautley had learned as a wee lad from the Adepts of New Tibet, or Blavatsky 3, as it was known to the tourism guide-books, he allowed the exertion of extraordinary thrust to build up—using, of course, only those sinews from kneecap to heel, the rest of his body lax as flaccid wax.
But this time, to no avail ...
"Plax off, hubby!" the grey-complexioned one snarled, lifting one cruel lip in a nasty sneer. "Forget all about the charge of pressure-sensitive flash powder in the left boot heel, or I'll air-condition your liver and your duodenum!"
Hautley sighed, but complied, permitting the thrust to slacken. Of course, the grey-complexioned Orgotyr in fluorescent scarlet tights slashed with dead-black piping and puckered ruffs had completed his natty sartorial ensemble with a set of X-ray contact lenses—how could Hautley have overlooked so obvious a gambit?
You’re getting mighty lax, he told himself severely.
Purpling with indignation, Dugan Motley huffed and wheezed like a beached Ore. Apoplectic fury seethed in his stout old heart. Incoherent with boiling rage, he rumbled and snorted sulphurously. Hautley keenly realized that any moment now the old war-horse would do something foolish, like charging the four intruders like a bull walrus in mating season. He must do something quickly, to stave off this suicidal outburst on the part of his fat old host, whom he had unmeaningly embroiled in a private feud.