Kenneth Bulmer - Keys to the Dimensions 04 by The Ships of Durostorum

Author:The Ships of Durostorum
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-02-10T13:12:23+00:00

IX

That night a girl came to Wilkie’s apartments. A slip of a thing with high breasts and rose complexion, with a tinkling laugh and wearing a silver gown that floated about her body, she pirouetted for him in the dusk.

“Don’t you like me, J. T.?”

“Sure, sure,” he said tiredly. “But not tonight, Josephine.”

She pouted. “You’re mooning after the Contessa!”

About to snap a tart retort, he hesitated. He wasn’t, was he?

“It’s not that,” he said lamely.

She flounced around him, at once languorously appealing and vixenish. Then, abruptly dropping her artifices, she approached him closely, smiling up into his face. “There are many things about Irunium, J. T., and about the Contessa, you do not know.” She turned, smiling in a way that brought all Wilkie’s senses alert. She darted for the door, then paused on the threshold, smiling tantalizingly at him.

“Well, J. T., at least you’ve proved to me that you don’t chase girls, just as you told me today!”

And, with that shattering remark, she was gone.

J. T. Wilkie stared in baffled astonishment at the closed door. It couldn’t be! But—but those last gestures, that imperious voice, that reference to a conversation he had had with her today— Could that have been the Contessa herself? In some other guise?

Impossible!

But he remembered the whispered stories of the Valcini, of the Contessa’s alter egos, remarks he had scarcely noted. But now… Now! He did not sleep well.

Promptly on time the next day he met Charnock in the anteroom to the Thomas Alva Edison conference room.

Charnock, wearing a smart set of blues and with his scarlet cocked hat very rakish, was deep in conversation with another captain of bargemen dressed as he was.

“Look, Pontius, I know,” Charnock was saying fretfully. “You know I’m a good bargeman.”

“There is no room for anyone who is not a good bargeman, Charnock.”

This man, Pontius, although dressed as was Charnock, carried himself with a more authoritarian air. From his pointed ears swung a sunburst of golden bells. If Wilkie had thought that Charnock’s swarthy face was that of a devil, Pontius, with his scarred, leathery and evil visage must be the king of devils.

“You’ll do whatever the Contessa wants, Charnock! By Siegler, you will!”

Charnock nodded stiffly. “I shall, Pontius. And I will still swear by the potent Black Naspurgo himself!”

The two men stood for a moment, toe to toe; then Wilkie’s presence obtruded itself and they relaxed, turned to scowl at him.

“Ah, J. T.,” Charnock ground out. “You are welcome.” Pontius grunted something rralf beneath his breath and swaggered off. As he went, he called over his shoulder: “Don’t forget, Charnock. You’re a loyal bargeman!”

“Confound that Pontius!” Charnock rumbled to Wilkie as they turned toward the door. “He gives himself airs.”

The complaint, even Wilkie knew, among equals, was not without precedent.

This morning the Contessa, for the first time since Wilkie had known her, sat on her chair without her glittery golden chain and without her personal Porteur, Soloman, gibbering and clucking by her side. Her dark, high-coifed hair fairly shimmered with gems.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.