The Kubla Khan Caper (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Read online

  It seemed to be down there attacking all the junk I’d drunk last night. Those little grabbers down around my duodenum. I still didn’t know what a duodenum was, but I was getting a pretty good idea where it was. I really shouldn’t have had a Martini, I thought. Probably I should have had a Mongoose.

  Finally I said, “Lyssa.”

  “Yes, Shell?”

  “What else did Bull tell you?”

  “Only what I said. Jeanne wanted to see Mr. Sardis pretty bad, and asked Bull to arrange it if he could. Told him Mr. Sardis would really want to talk to her. She told him another thing, I remember. Said it was about his daughter, and that’s why he’d want to talk to her.”

  “Sardis’ daughter? Neyra?”

  “I guess it must’ve been. Bull told me she just said it was about his daughter. And for Bull to tell him that.”

  “Interesting. Look, when you see Bull again, do try to find out if he arranged for Jeanne to see Sardis, will you?”

  “Sure. I’ll see him pretty quick. And I’d better get some clothes on, too.” She tilted her make do Martini glass and said, “That’s very, very good.”

  “Get’s better the farther you go, all right.” It was true. By now it was tasting like Novocain. I was beginning to think the stuff had bypassed my stomach and gone directly into my auricle and ventricle. Ah, that was right; I hadn’t had lunch yet. Hadn’t had breakfast, for that matter. In fact, I hadn’t eaten anything since about eight o’clock last night. Good thing I ate last night, I thought.

  “Is it really important?” Lyssa asked. “About Jeanne and Mr. Sardis, I mean?”

  “Real important. And the sooner you can find out and let me know, the better.”

  “I’ll ask him the first thing, then. The very, very first thing.”

  “Splendid. That’s very, very splendid.”

  “Like another?”

  “I’ve still got a little. Not much, but—”

  “Let me fill it up. Before the ice melts.”

  “Yeah. You know, you’re supposed to take the ice out. According, at least, to the experts. And, I sometimes like to think, I am an ex—”

  “There’s not as much left as I thought. But there’s enough.”

  “Oh, there’s enough, all right.”

  She was standing before me, pitcher in hand, leaning over, starting to pour. She’d tied the towel behind her in a knot which must have been loose to begin with, and which unless my eyes were deceiving me was getting looser. She’d been moving around, getting and pouring Martinis, and—there was no doubt about it. She was coming undone.

  The towel drooped a little more, started to slide down over those big smooth breasts, and I said, “Lyssa!” and she, becoming suddenly aware, cried, “Oh!” and grabbed for the towel.

  Well, it was a mess.

  She’d been pouring those horrible Martinis, and I’d been holding my glass out there, and when she yelled and grabbed for the towel, the pitcher in her hand clunked the glass in mine and in an instant it was raining gin, it was a Martini-burst, and Lyssa was crying “Oh!” for the second time, and grabbing—and missing.

  Suddenly it was over, but it had been a hell of a two seconds. Pitcher and glass lay on the floor. Near the crumpled white towel. Lyssa was still reaching for the towel, which of course was not where she was reaching. And I was partway up onto my feet, leaning forward and kind of clutching, in what remained of my effort to help Lyssa.

  For a few more seconds we stayed in that rather shocking position. Part of the reason for my temporary paralysis was the suddenness of the spilled Martinis. But most of it was caused by the sight of Lyssa, nude, a foot from me, bending toward me and, now, slowly straightening up.

  She looked like the Eve of night, like a newer and more magnificent Circe, and the slow rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed, the slight movement of those sensual lips in her wise and wanton face, was a siren song old when the world was young.

  I don’t know what would have happened right then—though I’ve a pretty damn good idea—because at that instant something strange began seeping into my consciousness. Strange, and wet. As though something strange and wet was seeping into my pants. I didn’t want to look away from Lyssa, but that strange and seeping wetness became more and more insistent and at last I looked.

  So, I thought, that’s where the Martinis went.

  The Martinis . . . or whatever they’d been.

  I wasn’t very happy about that noxious, poisonous, possibly fatal brand of Novocain to begin with. There had clearly been something subversive, sneaky, even diabolical about it. That stuff, strangely seeping insistently, might even do something horrible to a guy.

  I wouldn’t have been so—increasingly—concerned if it had fallen all over, say, my feet. But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t going to damage my running apparatus. Feet were OK. Hardly wet at all. It was my duodenum I was worried about.

  While I was staring, and wondering, wondering, Lyssa bent swiftly and picked up her towel. At any other time I’d have felt a pang of regret, but now it didn’t matter; more important things were afoot. Well, not exactly a-foot.

  “Lyssa,” I said in wondering tone, “that gin bottle . . . “

  “Yes?”

  “It didn’t have a skull-and-crossbones or anything like that on it, did it?”

  “No, Just a picture of a girl.”

  “That’s goo—A girl?”

  “Yes, a pretty girl—”

  “What difference does it make? A girl’s a girl—”

  “With a rose in her teeth—”

  “A rose in her—”

  “And it’s called gin. Just gin.”

  “It figures. Probably hand-written. Well, that settles it. Oh, Lyssa, we’ve got to do something—”

  “You’d better take your pants off.”

  “We’ve got to do—What?”

  “You’d better take your pants off.”

  “That’s what I thought you said.”

  “Take them off and I’ll iron it out for you.”

  “You must be kidding.”

  “It’ll only take a minute. I’ll just steam it out for you.”

  “Will that help?”

  “Shell, don’t act so frightened.”

  “Baby, fright is not my problem.”

  She stamped her foot. “Take off your pants!”

  “Say it again!”I cried.

  “Shell. I’ll kick you in the eyes . . . “

  “Well, hell,” I said, and started taking my pants off, “if you’re for it, I’m for it. Blimy, I guess we’re for it.”

  Lyssa grabbed my pants and walked away. After a while I said, “Is that all?”

  She didn’t answer me.

  During our just concluded dialogue Lyssa had been moving around in the room, but I hadn’t paid real attention to what she was doing, since my mind had been entirely occupied with my own problems. But now I noted that she’d set up a little portable ironing board and had a steam iron resting on it. She draped my keen pants with their little red stripes over an end of the ironing board.

  “You’re going to press my pants, aren’t you?” I said.

  “How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “Lots, I guess.”

  “Have to get that wet Martini stain out. You can’t leave here like that.”

  “It’s a dry Martini stain. But you’re right. I’m supposed to go to the ribbon-cutting, and I sure can’t go like this. It wouldn’t be—well, it wouldn’t be dignified.”

  Lyssa had, of course, refixed her towel, but she’d been moving around so much it was getting loose again. She’d tied it in front this time, or rather sort of at the shoulder, so it appeared she was wearing a short, low-cut, fuzzy white dress slit at the side up to her ear. It was lovely.

  “Lyssa,” I said, “you’re lovely. Especially in that get-out. Getup.”

  She smiled and her eyes flashed. “It is rather chic, isn’t it?”

  “Baby, it is the chic of Araby
. You know, with you in that outfit and me in my mahaharaja suit, we make quite a blinding couple, what?”

  “Especially right now, love,” she said.

  Lyssa turned to face me, moistening her lush red lips with the tip of her tongue, and I almost imagined I heard a little spat like when a woman wets a finger and taps it on an iron. There was something in the air, something different; it seemed suddenly more dense, more still. We looked at each other for several seconds, in silence.

  I guess something was bound to happen. It did. Maybe it wasn’t exactly what I thought might happen, but something sure as hell happened.

  I took one short step toward her, as she came toward me slowly and stopped half a step away; as she moved the loose knot at her shoulder sagged, the towel drooped down to the jutting point of one fine breast, clung for long electric seconds, rising and falling with her breath. She didn’t reach for the knot to tighten it.

  I looked at her eyes, and there seemed more green than ever now in their smoky darkness. Her full lips, moistened by the quick caress of her tongue, moved almost imperceptibly.

  The towel fell.

  Then she moved that last half-step toward me—and there was an astounding noise at the door.

  At least, it was a very large and clattering noise, and I guessed it was at the door. I had kind of lost my bearings, so to speak, but I had not lost my ears, and I knew that, wherever it had come from, it had been an exceptionally disturbing noise.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked Lyssa. In a whisper.

  It was easy to note every nuance of her changing expression, of which there were plenty. “Did I hear it?” she whispered.

  “I don’t suppose you did it,” I whispered sadly. “No such luck, huh?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’ll bet it’s the man from Porlock.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind.”

  It happened at the door again.

  “Sounds like something wild trying to break in, doesn’t it?” I said.

  “He never rings the bell.”

  “He . . . Who? As if I didn’t know.”

  “I think you’d better do . . . something. Shell.”

  “Yeah. Good thinking. Should have thought of that myself. But . . . like what?”

  She stepped back and turned away from me, then stood in the middle of the room kind of half on tiptoe, leaning toward the door, and called, “Just a minute. Who is it?”

  Ah, it was a lovely sight. But I could not give it the undivided attention which such a splendidly alive vista of velvet nudity normally would have demanded, because, from the other side of the door, came: “Who you suppose?”

  Just that, in a voice like thunder in a tunnel, and then: “Who you expecting, the King of Siam?”

  18

  “Oh, that’s a good idea, shell,” Lyssa whispered.

  “Get under the bed.”

  I figured she didn’t have to do all the thinking.

  “Wait a second, Bull,” she called. “I just got out of the shower.”

  “Hoo,” he said.

  Then she opened the door.

  “Hoo-hoo,” he said.

  I could see the back of Lyssa’s legs about up to the calves; her pretty feet; and see the door open; and see, clumping inside, two other feet, which weren’t pretty. They were sure big, though. I could also see some of his pinkish costume trousers and part of a big jeweled scabbard for his big sharp scimitar.

  “Come on in, Bull,” Lyssa was saying. “I’ll be ready in a minute.”

  “You supposed to be ready. I told you I’d be here quarter of noon.”

  “I forgot.”

  “That’s a hell of—Why’d you forget?”

  “I . . . forget.” She paused, then said, “You’d better wait outside for me, Bull, honey. While I get into costume.”

  “OK, Lyssa, baby.”

  I started to heave a big sigh of relief.

  It was going to be simple after all. He’d step outside, Lyssa would dress and leave, and after a suitable interval I would get the hell out myself.

  It wasn’t that I was afraid that if Bull and I got into a real knockdown-and-dragout he’d kill me. I’ve tangled with a lot of the good ones—and big ones, a couple of whom were even bigger than Bull Harper. It was merely that it would, like most such primitive solutions, solve nothing; it would place Lyssa in a tricky pickle; it would be highly embarrassing—to me; it would undoubtedly be painful as hell for both Bull and me; and he would probably kill me.

  So I started to sigh my big sigh. But only started.

  Because Bull said, “You better shake a leg. I’ll wait—Hey.”

  “What?”

  “Hey! What’s that?”

  “What’s what?”

  That’s what I was wondering—what’s what.

  “What’s that I see?”

  Yeah, what could he have seen which would put that savage bestial note into his voice? That growling, animal murderous note?

  “Is them pants?” he said.

  I felt faint. How could I have forgotten my pants? “What in hell you doin’,” Bull said, “pressin’ a man’s pants?”

  “Yes.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m doing. Pressing a man’s pants.”

  “Whose pants?”

  “A . . . friend’s.”

  “I didn’t think it was a enemy.”

  “Bull, you’re not jealous!”

  “Ha! Hoo! If you think I ain’t, you ain’t thinkin’. Where is he at? I’ll kill him. I’ll fix him so he wears skirts. I’ll pull his limb off his limbs. I’ll—”

  “Bull, there’s nobody here but you and me,” she lied smoothly. It was what I think of as a little white lie. Even if you think of it as a little colored lie, what’s the difference? It was to save me and this entire area from becoming a total shambles. It was a good lie.

  “Those are my brother’s pants,” Lyssa went on smoothly. “I’m doing his laundry.”

  “No kidding.”

  “See? There’s nothing to get excited about.”

  “So why am I so excited?”

  “That’s what I mean. Why are you?”

  “You don’t got a brother.”

  “Oh, Bull, I do, too. I just never told you about him.”

  “Why didn’t you?” he asked suspiciously.

  He was sure a suspicious fellow. Actually, I couldn’t blame him. I’d be suspicious myself if I saw a guy’s pants on my girl’s ironing board. Especially if they were my pants.

  It was getting pretty thick out there, but then Lyssa had an inspiration. At least she changed the subject.

  “Bull, honey,” she said smoothly. “You remember I asked you about that girl, Jeanne? Jeanne Jax.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “You listen to me. You said she wanted you to arrange for her to meet Mr. Sardis. Did you?”

  “What’s so—”

  “Bull, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. It is! And I’ll never speak to you again, I’ll never—”

  “OK, OK, don’t flip. Yeah, I talked to him and he said he’d like to see her. So I told her.”

  “When was that?”

  “What’s so damn . . . It was Thursday, late, when she asked me, like I told you before. Mr. Sardis set it up for her to come in and see him at half past three Friday. Yesterday. She called out in the morning yesterday and talked to me, I was on the gate then, and I told her it was OK.” He was quiet for a few moments. “I had to go back at three-thirty and let her in—you can’t open the gate, except from inside, without the key—which is why I couldn’t pick you up till right after then.”

  “All right, Bull. If you’ll wait—”

  “Shh.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Be quiet, I’m thinkin’. Yeah. I got it. He was asking me all them questions. About her, and Mr. Sardis. Him! Him! That big white-haired monkey. Shell Scott! HIM!”

  “Bull, please—”<
br />
  “The monkey I caught bare-handed, squeezin’ your—”

  “Bull! If you don’t quit it, I’ll never speak to you again—”

  “So clam up, Lyssa, baby. Hmm . . . “

  Well, she’d almost done it. But only almost.

  My shorts were never going to dry out at this rate. I was sweating something unbelievable. I have been in steam baths, in saunas, clunked on the head in the middle of the desert, but never before had I become so well acquainted with sweat. But I’m no quitter. I’d get out of this somehow. Or die trying.

  “Hmmm . . . There is something about those pants there.”

  Silence.

  Thump of big feet as Bull stepped toward the ironing board, over on my right.

  “There is something familiar about those pants.”

  He stopped suddenly. His ugly feet were approximately a yard from my head. “What’s all this on the floor?” he said. “That pitcher, and ice . . . and a glass. Two glasses. Two glasses?”

  Blimy, I thought, now we’re in for it. I should never have had a Martini with Lyssa. I should never have had anything with Lyssa. I should have given up girls a long time ago. No, I amended, not that; I’d rather die; which is probably how it’s going to work out.

  “And there’s that bottle of gin I gave you. Empty. You drank it? You drank it all?”

  Presumably you weren’t supposed to drink it. Most likely you weren’t supposed to smell it. Even from a distance. It was a decoration, like a vase. And Bull himself was responsible. He’d bought it. Or won it. Or made it. You cheapskate, I thought. You mad poisoner, you.

  I balled up a fist and looked at it. Not as big as Bull’s but a reasonably lethal instrument nonetheless. And I had two of them to his four. Practically even. I was at a disadvantage under the bed, of course. Not to mention the fact that I’d feel a bit sheepish if—when—he peeked under here and spotted me.

  Probably I should roll out from under the bed and spring quickly to my feet behind him and hit him. He might even turn around and see me and say, “Where’d you come from?” and never know for sure.