“Hail, O mortals,” said the Duchess.
I looked helplessly at the professor. Not even my extensive experience with lady novelists had equipped me to deal with the situation. He, however, was able to take the ball. He was a European and he had status and that’s the starting point for them: establish status and then conduct yourself accordingly. He said: “Madame, my name is Konrad Leuten. I am a doctor of philosophy of the
University of Gottingen and a member of the faculty of the University of Basle. Whom have I the honor to address?”
Her eyes narrowed appraisingly. “O mortal,” she said, and her voice was less windily dramatic, “know ye that here hi the New Lemuria worldly titles are as naught. And know ye not that the pure hearts of my subjects may not be sullied by base machinery?”
“I didn’t know, madame,” Leuten said politely. “I apologize. We intended, however, to go only as far as La Plume. May we have your permission to do so?”
At the mention of La Plume she went poker-faced. After a moment she waved at the bazooka man. “Destroy, O Phraxanartes, the base machine of the strangers,” she said. Phraxanartes touched the button of his stovepipe. Leuten and I jumped for the ditch, my hand welded to the briefcase-handle, when the rocket whooshed into the poor old Ford’s motor. We huddled there while the gas tank boomed and cans and bottles exploded. The noise subsided to a crackling roar and the whizzing fragments stopped coming our way after maybe a minute. I put my head up first. The Duchess and her retinue were gone, presumably melted into the roadside stand of trees.
Her windy contralto blasted out: “Arise, O strangers, and join us.”
Leuten said from the ditch: “A perfectly reasonable request, Norris. Let us do so. After all, one must be obliging.”
“And gracious,” I added.
Good old Duchess! I thought. Good old Leuten! Wonderful old world, with hills and trees and bunnies and kitties and considerate people …
Leuten was standing on one foot, thumbing his nose, sticking out his tongue, screaming: “Norris! Norris! Defend yourself!” He was slapping my face with his free hand. Sluggishly I went into the posture of defense, thinking: Such nonsense. Defense against what? But I wouldn’t hurt old Leuten’s feelings for the world—
Adrenalin boiled through my veins, triggered by the
posture. Spiders. Crawling^hairy, horrid spiders with purple, venom-dripping fangs. They hid in your shoes and bit you and your feet swelled with the poison. Their sticky, loathsome webs brushed across your face when you walked in the dark and they came scuttling silently, champing their jaws, winking their evil gem-like eyes. Spiders!
The voice of the duchess blared impatiently: “I said, join us, O strangers. Well, what are you waiting for?”
The professor and I relaxed and looked at each other. “She’s mad,” the professor said softly. “From an asylum.”
“I doubt it. You don’t know America very well. Maybe you lock them up when they get like that in Europe; over here we elect them chairlady of the Library Fund Drive. If we don’t, we never hear the end of it.”
The costumed girl was leading the Duchess’s sulky onto the road again. Some of her retinue were beginning to follow; she waved them back and dismissed the girl curtly. We skirted the heat of the burning car and approached her. It was that or try to outrun a volley from the miscellaneous sporting rifles.
“O strangers,” she said, “you mentioned La Plume. Do you happen to be acquainted with my dear friend Phoebe Bancroft?”
The professor nodded before I could stop him. But almost simultaneously with his nod I was dragging the Duchess from her improvised chariot. It was very unpleasant, but I put my hands around her throat and knelt on her. It meant letting go of the briefcase but it was worth it.
She guggled and floundered and managed to whoop: “Don’t shoot! I take it back, don’t shoot them. Pamphil-ius, don’t shoot, you might hit me!”
“Send ’em away,” I told her.
“Never!” she blared. “They are my loyal retainers.”
“You try, professor,” I said.
I believe what he put on then was his classroom man-