Cycle of Nemesis Read Free Page B

stared down at myself from that musicians’ gallery.
    Looking up, my mouth idiotically half-open, I saw the Corinthian helmet with its blue and yellow checks now all gorily smeared with blood—for no doubt existed in my mind that those ominous stains were anything other than blood—and the man’s gray tunic and slacks showed more of the grim stains. His cloak had gone, but the manner of its passing could be conjectured from the broken and dangling golden chains swinging from his shoulders.
    I looked for a way up into the gallery.
    The mahogany door toward which I rushed was fast locked. I looked about the room, seeing it stuffed with the bric-a-brac of the auction like a brilliant overturned wastebasket of the ages, and seeing no immediate way up. The man above me moved. I heard a hoarse and distressful gasping.
    “Hey, you!” I called, springing out and searching again for him.
    At first I did not see him. Then a single drop of bright red blood fell and splashed onto the marble floor before my feet.
    There he was, huddled down against the balustrade.
    “Are you hurt? Do you need help?”
    No answer. The heavy tramp of a guard’s footfalls from my rear and Pomfret’s returning figure from my side convinced me that unless I could make contact with this mysterious stranger in the next ten seconds I would never do so.
    “Bert? Did you call?”
    "Listen, man! You’re in trouble. And you wear my face.... Who are you? Can I help you?”
    "Bert? Are you talking to yourself or something?”
    No more blood fel l. The glint of a broken golden chain vanished from the gallery.
    “Yes!” I shouted back at Pomfret. “Yes—I am talking to myself!”
    "Everything all right, sir?” The guard, a heavy brown-faced man in a brown uniform, whose square brown hands rested with negligent efficiency on his belt less than an inch from his holstered weapons, regarded me with that sub-surface knowledgeability reserved by the authoritarian lower ranks of any military or para-military force in dealing with civilians. “I thought you were talking to someone?”
    “Just to Mr. Pomfret here, sergeant, that’s all.”
    He looked at us, without meeting our eyes, and then said something about doing his duty and walked off. His straight ramrod back and stiff legs made me itch.
    “What the hell’s going on, Bert?” Pomfret took my arm the better to make me understand his concern. “You were shouting at yourself—”
    “Did you see . . . ?” Then I held my tongue. He couldn’t have, and if he had he would have done as I should have done and roused the guards. Hell—there was a fortune beyond price on show here and men would go to any lengths to lay their own hands on it. All the guards from any of the Security Organizations wouldn’t stop a really first-class tea-leaf operation I could have planned myself if I had had both the money and a criminal intent.
    “You look awful. Come over here and sit down. I’ll rustle up a drink—”
    “It’s okay, George. Really.” I laughed and regretted that essay into imperturbability on the instant. “Just a slight impediment in my mouth I was trying to clear.” I coughed, then with the desperation of the witless, added, “We wetnecks sometimes carry on in odd ways. You mustn’t mind me.”
    He looked at me as though to say he was glad I was leaving him the next day, and smiled like chipping ice, and said, “You want to look after yourself; can’t have you flipping your lid all over the place.”
    You had to hand it to old George. Nothing was going to make him change his mind about anything.
    Before we went away I put my foot carefully on the spot of blood and scraped my shoe sole over it.
    I didn’t know why I did that.
    But I felt the action fitted the situation.

I II
    As though borne on one of those tidal waves whose existence is at first suspected only through the more uniform undulations of undersea plants, I found myself being carried along on a dark wave of suspicion, fear and