House of Shards (35 page)

There was a crash as a policewoman knocked over a small table and dropped a six-hundred-year-old Pendjalli vase to the floor.

“I’ll assume responsibility for the damage, sir,” said Colonel-General Vandergilt as she marched into the room. “My department will pay.”

“I didn’t know your department had
that much money
,” Maijstral snarled. Vandergilt looked doubtful for a moment. Maijstral began to lurch toward the bedroom. He wished to be present when Roberta was discovered, and offer such moral support as was possible.

“Not so fast, Maijstral,” said Colonel-General Vandergilt. She stepped forward in her black uniform, silver buttons shining. “You’ll have to be searched.” So eager was she to get about the searching that no less than three separate strands of hair had escaped her helmet and were dangling in her eyes.

“You can search me in the bedroom as well as anywhere,” Maijstral said, and kept moving.

“Life-form in the closet!” called a policeman from the bedroom, and suddenly there was the businesslike clacking of weapons being readied, and the cops began to deploy into attack formations.

Alarm flashed through Maijstral. “Put the guns down!” he said hastily. He had arrived in the bedroom door and was acutely, aware that anyone firing would probably have to shoot right through him. He gingerly stepped to one side.

“Closet,” he said. “Open.”

Roberta looked quite cool as she stepped into full view, wearing her dressing gown as if she were making her grand entrance at a ball, and if Maijstral hadn’t been quite so concerned about all the guns leveled at his spleen, he might have spared a moment or two for admiration.

No guns crackled, and Maijstral breathed a fervent sigh of relief. “Ah,” he said, and stepped into the bedroom. “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce my alibi, Her Grace the Duchess of Benn. Your grace, this is Colonel-General Denise Vandergilt, Constellation Special Services.”

Colonel-General Vandergilt stuffed stray hair into her helmet and stalked into the center of the room, followed by Joseph Bob and his family. Vandergilt looked coldly at the Duchess while the Prince and his family looked in surprise at each other.

“What’s your real name?” Vandergilt said. “I don’t use titles.”

“No titles?” Roberta said. Her eyebrows rose. “Fine with me—
Denise
. My name is Roberta Altunin.”

Vandergilt looked as if she was adding the name to some mental dossier, which she probably was.

Maijstral turned to Joseph Bob, who was beginning to look abashed. “I would have let you in earlier,” he said, “but there are certain things a gentleman—”

“Object in the ventilator,” called a policeman.

Maijstral threw up his hands. This was going to be a long morning.

“It’s the right wave pattern,” the policeman added, peering at his detectors.

The ventilator was pulled away, and Colonel-General Vandergilt produced a “fingerprint handkerchief,” which, despite its name, was a handkerchief guaranteed not to remove fingerprints, and which could be used for holding and transporting evidence. She reached into the ventilator and took out the object therein. When she showed it to the assembled company, there was a triumphant glow in her eyes.

“Is this your property, sir?” she asked the Prince.

The room reeled about Maijstral. He wanted to clutch his heart, fall to his knees, and (were ashes only available) pour ashes on his head.

Displayed on the white handkerchief was the prototype wooden revolver of Colonel Samuel Colt.

“I didn’t do it!” Maijstral said.

Colonel-General Vandergilt smiled thinly. “That’s what they all say.” She handed the pistol to an underling. “Have that checked for fingerprints,” she said.

Had not Maijstral been preoccupied by visions of the fate that awaited him—red-robed judges, unfriendly prison wardens, overly friendly fellow inmates, fetters, thumbscrews, and so on—he would have noticed Joseph Bob turning a dangerous shade of red.

Vandergilt puffed her cheeks and blew a strand of hair out of her face—she didn’t want to spoil her big-moment— and then looked stern and dropped a black-gauntleted hand on Maijstral’s shoulder.

“Drake Maijstral, you’re under arrest!” she proclaimed, then turned to Roberta. “Arid so are your accomplices,” she added, and smiled. “

“Accomplices!” Roberta said, outraged.

“Accomplices,” Vandergilt repeated, and then she turned to Joseph Bob. “Sir, if you will accompany us to the police station, you can make a formal identification of your property and sign a complaint.”

“I didn’t do it,” Maijstral said again, but no one seemed to be listening to him.

“Complaint?” Joseph Bob muttered. He was bright scarlet. “Complaint? Damned if I’ll sign a complaint! A guest in my home!”

Maijstral looked at Joseph Bob in sudden hope. Joseph Bob was going to save him! he thought. His old school chum! Good old J.B.!

The Colonel-General looked puzzled. “Sir,” she said, “if you don’t sign the complaint, I won’t be able to arrest Maijstral and his gang.”

“I’ll be signing no complaints!” Joseph Bob said, and then he turned to Maijstral, and Maijstral’s heart stopped at the fury in the Prince’s eyes. Joseph Bob shook a finger in Maijstral’s face. “A guest in my home, and you steal from me!”

“I didn’t do it,” Maijstral pointed out.

Joseph Bob socked him in the jaw. It was a clean, professional punch, one that would make any pom boxer proud, and it knocked Maijstral sprawling.

Joseph Bob had a number of intentions at this point, all of which were fated to go sadly awry. His first intention was to stand commandingly over Maijstral’s prone body while denouncing him, a dramatic pose recommended by any number of precedents derived from the theater. Unfortunately Joseph Bob had just broken two knuckles on Maijstral’s head and spoiled his intended effect by hopping around the room while clutching his wounded hand.

“Maijstral!” he yelped, turning white. “I’ll have satisfaction on the field of honor! My brother will speak for me!”

Joseph Bob’s second intention, likewise derived from the theater, was to stalk dramatically from the room and leave behind an awed silence, an intention that was frustrated, in the first instance, by the rather crabbed, hunched-over stance his wound was compelling him to adopt, and in the second, by the well-delivered power kick that Roman planted in his face.

Roman, as it happens,
was
a pom boxer, and in the course of avenging his employer against a dastardly surprise attack, he knew better than to risk fragile hand bones battering away at the solid bone of someone’s skull, not when a better weapon was at hand—in this case, a foot encased in a sturdy boot.

Joseph Bob’s nose exploded like an overripe kibble fruit, and the Prince de Tejas sailed backward into Maijstral’s room and joined him on the carpet.

Arlette flung herself down on her husband, either to assure herself as to his well-being or to protect him against further assault.

His remaining fur bristling, Roman advanced, a huge, alarming, red-eyed menace, but was brought up short by the weapons of a dozen or so police that were suddenly thrust up under his muzzle.

“Roman,” Roberta warned. “Don’t.”

Roman fell back, but the snarl remained on his face.

He really
was
a bad molter.

Maijstral, to this point, had been too stunned by Joseph Bob’s punch to be able to react to any of the subsequent events. He tried to sit up, then decided that remaining prone might prove a course easier to sustain. Roberta dropped to his side and cradled his head in her hands. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“No,” Maijstral said, and felt a certain pride at retaining his grip on both speech and reality.

“Shall I stand as your second?” Roberta asked, “I’ve had practice at it, after all.”

Maijstral, who didn’t at this point wish to attempt more syllables than absolutely necessary, nodded his answer. She turned to the Bubber.

“Will,” she said, “I’ll talk to you later.” She looked at the others. “I believe the rest of you no longer have any business here.”

Joseph Bob was unable to regain his feet, and he was carried from the room by the police. When Roman kicked someone, the someone stayed kicked.

Maijstral, the chimes in his head subsiding, realized that he’d been saved from the prison by virtue of the fact that he was about to die in a duel with the finest swordsman and pistol shot in the Principality of Tejas.