groaned and the very floor shook.
“Now what a fair Earth gymnast-such as perhaps I’ll be able to make out of you-can do,” and they showed her that.
“Now I’ll find out what you can do-if anything. You can’t do even fifty fast push-ups without going flat on your
face,” and of course she couldn’t
He worked her fairly hard for half an hour, which was about all she could take, then said, “That’s enough for today,
poor thing.” Then, turning to Yvette, “Give her a massage in steam, and go deep. After that, the usual.”
“No, I want you to do it yourself,” the girl said. “They say you’re tops and I want nothing but the best.”
“Okay,” Jules said, in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice, and peeled down to his white nylon shorts. “That’d be
better-I’ll know more exactly how you come along.”
The ladies-in-waiting were shocked-or pretended to be -as the three-quarters-naked man worked on their com-
pletely naked mistress; but Jules, alone, of all those present, was-apparently-not affected at all. He was a
top-expert masseur working at his profession.
This went on for day after day. Since the Duchess was actually a strong, healthy athletic girl, splendidly built, and
agile both physically and mentally, she learned fast and developed fast. But for the first time in her life she had
struck a man and bounced. It was an intolerable situation -a situation that got no better at all as time went on.
He stayed coldly impersonal and more than somewhat contemptuous; he was and he remained a master craftsman
wasting his talents on material entirely unworthy of his skill. He paid no attention whatever to any of the little plays
she made.
One day, however, when she had become a pretty fair gymnast and was very proud of her accomplishments, all the
ladies-in-waiting disappeared before the massage was to begin.
“We don’t need them any more, I don’t think.” She posed, with her skimpy garment half off, and gave him an
undereyebrows look that would have put any other man she knew into a flat spin. “Do we?”
“I don’t, that’s sure,” he said, with the sneer that had become so maddening that she wanted to bash it back into his
skull with a sledgehammer. “And if you’re trying to seduce me you’re wasting your time. You’re a hunk of clay I’m
trying to model into something halfway worth while, and nothing else. I’d not rather have you than any other mass
of poor-grade clay-or a dime’s worth of catmeat.”
That blew it-sky high. “You low-born oaf!” she screamed. “You clod! You base-born peasant, I’ll have you flayed
alive and staked out on . . .” She stopped screaming suddenly and her eyes widened the veriest little.
“Stop running off at the mouth!” he rasped, timing it so perfectly that she knew he had interrupted her tirade. “My
birth, high or low, has no bearing. I am duClos. I am trying to mold you into what our Creator intended you to be;
His instrument to produce men, not the milksops and flabs now infesting this sinful planet Earth.”
“Oh? Don’t tell me you’re a Puritan!” she exclaimed, very glad indeed to change the subject. “I should have known
it, though, by al! that hair.”
“An ex-Puritan,” be corrected her. “I do not believe that everything pleasant is sinful, but neglect of the human body
most certainly is. So get in there. And snap it upbefore you cool off too much.”
Work went on, exactly as though nothing had happened. She graduated into the House of Strength and, everything
considered, she did very well there.
And she convinced herself quite easily that she had not revealed any tittle of the secret that had been held for
sixtyseven years.
IX
As an example of the traditional loyalty of the Navy: When Empress Stanley 5, her husband and four of their
five children were assassinated in 2229, their youngest child, Prince Edward, escaped death only because he,
then an ensign in the Navy, was being guarded as no other person had ever been guarded before. Fleet
Admiral Simms declared martial law and, in the bloodiest purge in all history, executed not only all those
found guilty, including Prince Charles and Princess Charlene, but also their entire families. He then made
himself regent and ruled with an iron hand for six years. Then, to the vast surprise of all, he relinquished his
regency on the day that Prince Edward came of age and he himself crowned Prince Edward Emperor Stanley
Six (Farnham; The Empire, Vol. 1, p. 784).
The Fortress of Englewood
Jules and Yvette deigned to accept six Grand Dukes and their wives as personal clients-among whom were Grand
Duke Nicholas and Grand Duchess Olga of Sector Twenty -but that was all they would take. In that position of
intimacy they dug up a few hints, but neither of them could lay hold of anything solid.
At every opportunity they planted Earth operators in the kitchens, in the garages and everywhere else they could.
These detectives found bits and pieces of information, but they could not find any leads to Banion or to any of his
blood: nor to the all-important Patent of Royalty.
“We’ve got to take this to the Head, Eve,” Jules said finally. “I hate to yell for help on our first really big job, but
he’s just too damned big for us. And it’s more than a possibility that it’d be the Head’s head that would roll, not
Duke Twenty’s. We simply can’t take the chance.”
Yvette nodded. “You’re right, I’m afraid. He’s really big . . . but he hasn’t got a drop of Stanley blood in him…”
“Which is why he’s playing it this way,” Jules declared. “The power behind the Throne. I’ll set up a meet.”
He set it up and they laid the whole ugly mess squarely on the line, and while they talked the Head aged ten years.
When they were done he sat silent and motionless, in intense concentration, for a good fifteen minutes. They could
almost feel the master strategist’s keen brain at work. Finally he lifted his head sharply and he said:
“I was hoping it would be one of the others, but you’re right. We can’t move against him without the genuine Patent
actually in our hands.”
Jules scowled. “That’s what I was afraid you’d say. And that Patent must be in the solidest safe-deposit vault on
Earth.”
“It isn’t,” the Head said, flatly. “The Emperor can open any bank vault he pleases, with no reason at all. So it’s in a
vault as good as any on Earth, but in the deepest subcellar of Castle Englewood. I’d stake my head on that.
Theoretically, the Emperor could open that vault, too, at whim. But trying it would touch everything off and Nich-
olas might win. So I’m going to stake all our heads. No matter how daintily we try to pussyfoot it, there’s always the
chance of our touching off the explosion. However, there’d be no point in his killing the Crown Princess as long as
the Emperor and the Empress are alive, so what do you think of this?” and they discussed details for two hours.
Three days later, the news media announced that Emperor Stanley Ten had had a heart attack.
It wasn’t too serious, as such things go, but a battery of specialists agreed unanimously that he bad to have at least
two months of carefree rest, preferably at his favorite summer place, Big Piney in the Rockies. Wherefore Crown
Princess Edna was given the unusual title of “Empress Pro Tem” and her parents went, with no pomp or circum-
stance at all-not to Big Piney, but to an island in the Pacific that was guarded by every defensive device known to
the military science of the age.
And Empress Pro Tern Edna announced a party-a getting-acquainted party that, beginning with a full Grand Imperial
Court, would last for three days-to which all thirty-six Grand Dukes and their entire families were invited. And did
any of the invitees even think of declining? Not one.
As that party began, Jules and Yvette and a regiment of experts went as insidiously as possible to work on Castle
Englewood. Having free run of the place, as far as anyone now there was concerned, the two went first-with
stunners in their hands-to visit the key personnel. They were followed by fifty cat-footed, fully briefed
d’Alemberts, who took care of everyone else; particularly of the many-timestoo-numerous Castle Guard.
Architects and engineers had detailed plans of the castle, but they were found useless. The actual details had never
been registered. So electronic technicians unlimbered their most sensitive detectors and explored walls, floors and
ceilings. They traced cable after cable, wire after wire; and section after section of the vast building went dark and
powerless.
It had been clear from the start that this was no ordinary residence of any ordinary Grand Duke. It was a fortress; a