Robert Asprin's Myth-Quoted by Jody Lynn Nye

Author:Jody Lynn Nye
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group, USA
Published: 2012-10-27T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

“How could you possibly think I’m lying?”

—PINOCCHIO

Pookie went home with the Earwig and Shutterbug safely stowed in her satchel. I marched out into the pale sunrise and headed for the Evening Screed.

As Pattikin had said, the news-gathering business didn’t wait for daylight to begin its operations. The Screed office looked just like the Morning Gossip except for the faces of the reporters, typesetters, and editors. I asked for the managing editor.

“Romses Beleeger,” said the tall Tipp who came out of a private room to shake my hand. “How may I help you?”

“You can stop trying to slander me or my people,” I said conversationally.

“I beg your pardon? Are you sure it is I whom you seek?”

The way he phrased his sentences told me I had found my perfect grammarian.

“Only if you’re the person who runs this rag.”

Romses drew himself up. “I beg your pardon?”

I looked down my nose at him. “No need to beg. I will grant it freely, if you don’t print details of the phony attempt at seduction perpetrated on me by one of your reporters a short while ago.”

“One of my reporters tried to seduce you? Which one?”

“Pattikin Lockheart.”

Romses shook his head. “I regret to contradict you, sir, but no one by that name is employed here.”

“What?” I asked. I felt in my belt pouch for the card she had given me. I fished it out and handed it to Romses. He took it as if it were a fin from a week-dead fish.

“This is a forgery, sir,” Romses said, handing it back. “I promise you, I have no one by that name in my office.”

“But she said . . .” I realized I had been gullible, in more ways than one. “Someone sent her to me. We set up a private meeting . . .”

“Is that so?” Romses asked, the light of battle illuminating his light-brown eyes. “Tell me all about it.”

“No!” I said, not wishing to dig myself in deeper trouble than I already had. I should have led him to admit he had instructed her to set it up. “So she didn’t bring you material for an article about me?”

“Oh, yes, we received one from someone by that name. My people are setting it up now for today’s paper.” He gestured at the press running in the rear of the shop.

“You can’t print it!” I said.

“I refuse to allow our paper to be the only digest in town that didn’t,” Romses told me sternly. “The story is already in circulation.”

“Already?” I asked. “How? Where?”

Romses lifted an eyebrow toward one of the clerks slitting open envelopes at a desk near the door.

“Dag, send me today’s Morning Gossip.”

The young Tipp lifted a rolled-up newspaper and sent it flying toward us. It landed in Romses’s hands with a SMACK! He folded the front page outward and showed it to me.

I read the page with my temper flaring into a volcanic blaze. It was an account of the first few moments of my meeting with Pattikin, but

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