He worked his mouth, as if he were surprised to feel his lips moving, and he said, “Okay, but—”
“Come down, darling,” she said.
He ignored her offered hands and jumped down, with Brutus jumping close behind him.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve got a vicious headache,” he said. Then he seemed to remember Brutus, and he turned and bent down and scratched the hell hound behind the ears. “Thanks, partner.”
Brutus looked bashfully at the ground. “Least I could do,” he said. “We have a case to work on, and—”
“Jessie, it was just awful what they did to you,” Helena said.
“I know what they did,” the detective assured her, grimly. “I was aware of my surroundings all the time, even though I had been turned to stone. I would like to hear how you two found me! I’d like to hear, that is, after I’ve found a men’s room. I never did have a chance to use the one at the Four Worlds.”
Chapter Nine
Zeke Kanastorous was still trapped in the small chalk circle in Jessie’s inner office when the three got back from Millennium City just after one o’clock in the morning. Brutus had relighted the two previously extinguished black candles, to relieve the angry little creature of the worst of its pain, but Kanastorous was far from happy. He paced around and around in that tight circle, where only four steps were needed to make a full circuit, and he cast occasional glances at Jessie, Helena and the hell hound as they filed into the room. He was dotted with a black excretion, some form of ectoplasm, and his four-fingered hands were fisted at his sides.
“How you feeling, Zeke?” Jessie asked, moving into the main circle with Helena and Brutus at his back.
“You’ll be sorry for this,” the demon said. He stopped pacing and faced the detective, his shoulders hunched, his eyes blazing.
“What did I do?” Jessie asked.
“There is a law against black-magic crudities. It’s no longer possible for some wise ass magician to summon up a demon whenever he wants. They punish that sort these days!”
“Do they punish kidnappers?” Jessie asked.
“What’s that mean?” Kanastorous snapped.
“I was kidnapped,” Jessie said. “You were one of the conspirators who worked to snare me.”
“A gross misrepresentation of the facts,” the demon said, drawing himself up to his full, yet diminutive, height, his carapaced shoulders pulled back, his bony chest thrust out.
“Oh?”
“Yes, my Sam Spade friend. You see, I was working with the government under special orders from the Regent for the Western States.” He gave the title as much prestige and awe, by his obsequious tone of voice, as some people had once given the names of God before the maseni had come and exposed God for what he was.
Jessie raised his eyebrows and said, “Well, well. The national government is interested in keeping the Galiotor Tesserax affair quiet”
“You better believe it, my hardnosed detective friend,” Kanastorous said. “I’ve already explained to your hound, here, that I know nothing of the Tesserax business; I wasn’t told of it. But I do know the government’s in a sweat to keep it hushed up. Therefore, if I have broken any laws, as you assert, I have done so with complete immunity from prosecution in any nether-world court of law.”
“From their prosecution,” Jessie amended.
“I fail to understand.”
“You’ve no guarantee of immunity from my prosecution,” Jessie said. He walked to the edge of the larger circle and pointed his index finger at the demon’s squashed nose. “When I let you go tonight, you can follow one of two courses. One: you can run immediately to the authorities and tell them how you were illegally called up by ancient means, how your civil liberties were grieviously violated; you can inform them that I have been rescued by my friends, and that I am loose again. Two: you can simply forget that all of this happened; you can let bygones be bygones; you can keep your head and let things go on as they have always gone before. If you choose the first course—”