“You now see,” concluded Magrit, “why we need all of you together. Greyboar can deal with the soldiers in the guardroom. Zulkeh can handle the magic guarding the Rap Sheet. And all of you together, let’s hope, can handle whatever horror it is that dwells in the chamber between. Any questions?”
Greyboar spoke. “I see a couple of problems. First, the soldiers. The ones in the guardroom—what are we talking about here? A half dozen or so?”
Magrit nodded.
“That’s a piece of cake. But how about the soldiers at the main gate? Must be a couple of hundred at least, if it’s like every other Ozarine Embassy.” Greyboar grimaced. “That’s a wee much. And what about the drawbridge and the portcullis? Mind you, I’ve got a way with opening doors”—Ignace grinned—”but a whole drawbridge? I don’t know.” He flexed his enormous hands, gazed down at them. “I don’t know.”
“Our job, this,” stated the first.
“You’ll not be needing to worry about the main entrance,” added the second.
“You’ll be taking a different route,” explained the third.
“Coming up from below,” elaborated the fourth.
“Through the artist’s tunnels,” detailed the fifth.
“Paul Gauphin’s tunnels,” specified the sixth.
“Gauphin?” exclaimed Zulkeh. “He lives yet? I had thought the man dead!”
“No, he’s still alive,” said Magrit. “He just travels around so much to so many exotic and far-off lands that everybody always thinks he must have died. Actually, he’s been back in Prygg for several years now. Keeps himself exclusively to the tunnels he’s dug all over the city. Says it’s primitive, inspires him.”
“Known throughout Pryggia as the Underground Artist,” added the first.
“But how can he help us?” asked Ignace.
The second coughed. “Well, it’s a bit delicate, this, but you see Paul’s—how I shall I put it?—well—”
“He’s a lecher,” interrupted the third.
“A profligate,” added the fourth.
“A satyr,” chipped in the fifth.
“A two-legged goat,” concluded the sixth.
“The point is,” explained the first, “that the Ozarine Ambassador’s wife is a most attractive young lady—”
“As is the wife of the Consul,” said the second.
“And the wife of the Chargé d’Affaires,” added the third.
“And the wife of—”
“Stow it!” bellowed Magrit. “We don’t need another of your laundry lists. The fact is, Zulkeh, that almost every Ozarine official anyone’s ever met has a gorgeous teenage wife—barely pubescent, most of ’em—’cause they’re all a lot of lechers. Would-be lechers, I should say. Big difference between them and Paul Gauphin is that he can keep it up.”
“You should know!” piped up the salamander. A teacup went flying. The evil amphibian darted for a mousehole.
“A wallet!” yelled Magrit. Then, turning back to her audience:
“The point is, that the Underground Artist has dug tunnels into every bedchamber in the castle, including that of Rupert Inkman himself, the chief of station.”
“Wherein lounges his girlfriend,” explained the second.
“No Ozarine lass, but a Pryggian minx.” This from the third.
“Fair in form and limb,” commented the fourth.
“But foul in mind and spirit,” countered the fifth.
“A rotten collaborator,” stated the sixth, “providing comfort if not much aid to the Ozarine oppressor of the Groutch masses.”
This last bid fair to start another round of canaille toasts, but Magrit intervened.
“Can we keep to the subject?” she demanded. “Anyway, that’s how you’ll get in—Paul’ll lead you through his tunnels right into Inkman’s bedroom, which abuts directly to the guardroom.”
Greyboar coughed. “Still a bit of a problem here, Magrit. The girl’s likely to be there, along with this Inkman fellow. We are doing the job at night, I assume?” Magrit nodded. “Well, then, they’ll both be there. And while I certainly don’t mind throttling a Crud, the girl—” He fell silent, then spoke again, in a stony voice. “I don’t choke girls.”
“It’s true,” confirmed Ignace. “It’s a sticking point with him. A lot of business it’s cost us, too,” he groused.
“Who said anything about choking girls?” asked Magrit. “Or Rupert Inkman, for that matter. They’ll both be gone. We’re doing the job tomorrow tonight—during the wedding reception for the Princess Snuffy and the Honorable Anthwerp Freckenrizzle III.”
“Scion of Ozar’s fifth-wealthiest plutocrat!” exclaimed the first.