The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  “This guy,” who was no other than

  Rustan, proved to be a tough customer. The chief of the guards was convinced that Rustan, if handled properly, could be played as a trump for law and order. A Rag Bird that tried to restrain his fellows from doing mischief was a rare bird indeed, and that was what Rustan had been caught in the act of doing.

  “He’s got the makings of a bodyguard,” the chief of guards reported to the magistrates the next day. “Let me work on him.”

  “Be sure he doesn’t work on you,” they retorted, noting the chief’s black eye. The fact was that Rustan had tried to fight his way out, believing he would be hanged with the others. The guards had subdued him with guns and pinned him down with questions. He had done his best to lie out of his heroic role.

  Forced to admit that he had tried to dissuade his companions from throwing rocks, he had been unwilling to take any credit for it. “I hate the magistrates as much as any Rag Bird,” Rustan had growled, “but I’ve got sense enough not to go around picking fights.”

  “We’re going to give you a chance,” the chief guard declared.

  “I don’t want it,” Rustan retorted. “We’re ready to play fair with Rag Birds like you. We’re going to give you a job.”

  Rustan grunted. He knew what these big shots were driving at. They were trying to stem the tide of more Rag Bird trouble by tossing out a few favors. He bristled with the snobbery of an aristocrat.

  “No job for me,” he growled. “I don’t mind the dirt of living in the parks and orchards, but I don’t want to get messed up with magistrates.”

  He was assigned to Hobart, who lacked a bodyguard. A guardsman’s cap was stuck on his head, a preposterously large sword was belted around his ragged clothes, and he was pronounced ready for his first order.

  Hobart gave him a scornful eye. “You can’t stick around me looking that way. You’ve got to be hosed down and uniformed from head to toe.”

  Rustan shrugged; then Hobart told him to come on, they’d take care of the uniform later.

  And so, less than twenty-four hours after the glass-crashing, less than ten hours after the latest Rag Bird hangings, Rustan found himself dragging along at the heels of the starchy, trim-mustached young magistrate, without the slightest idea where he was going.

  They passed out of the capital building by way of an arched footbridge, high over the street—and then Rustan saw that they were entering the Temple of Visions.

  “I’d better wait outside,” said Rustan.

  “Come along, Rags,” Hobart barked. “With you for a contrast, my appearance should be perfect.”

  CHAPTER VII

  A Shock for Venzita

  Venzita looked up at the two approaching figures as they entered the amber-lighted music room. Her hands released the golden harp, her slim fingers went to her lips stifling a little cry of surprise.

  Her gaze lingered on the tall, ragged figure outrageously adorned with a huge sword and a guardsman’s cap. With any other face that mixed costume would have been a comic cartoon. But Venzita’s gaze grew intent, spellbound. She knew that face!

  “Don’t mind the caricature, Miss Venzita,” said Hobart, marching up confidently. “I dragged him out of the junk wagon to make a bodyguard out of him . . . I’m speaking to you, Miss Venzita.”

  Venzita nodded slowly to Hobart, mumbled a low, “Your honor,” and her eyes went back to meet Rustan’s steady, impenetrable gaze. There was more than recognition in the Rag Bird’s expression. There was challenge, accusation. Venzita’s heart beat wildly.

  Hobart’s sharp voice intruded upon her shocked senses. “What’s the matter, Miss Venzita?”

  “N-nothing.”

  “If you’re expecting me to apologize for the appearance of my bodyguard, forget it. I’ve come to deliver a court message . . . Will you do me the favor to quit looking at that rag heap? I’ve come to talk with you.”

  “I beg your pardon. Please be seated, your honor—and—sir.” She put her harp aside and led the way across to the powder-blue upholstered divan. Rustan, however, remained standing. Venzita shot an anxious glance at him, then managed to turn her back toward him. “Your honor seems a trifle impatient,” she said to Hobart.

  “I’m one magistrate who isn’t overconcerned by your whims, Miss Venzita,” Hobart answered rather too politely.

  “I’m quite aware of that,” said Venzita, “and I’m a little surprised.” Hobart laughed lightly. “Rather disturbing, isn’t it, to find that one magistrate out of sixteen can’t be made into a puppet.”

  “You’re all mixed up, Mr. Hobart, if you think I’m running a puppet show. My business is music.”

  “Music!” Hobart arched an eyebrow contemptuously.

  “Most people appreciate music, Mr. Hobart, but a few—alas—don’t have it in them. The ratio is about fifteen to one, I believe.”

  “I happen to have a practical turn of mind,” said Hobart sullenly.

  “That’s why I’m surprised to see how you hate me,” Venzita smiled politely, “considering that it was my suggestion to Mozambique that made you a magistrate. Would you care for a drink, your honor?” She rang for a waiter.

  Fortified with a few gulps from the goblet the waiter brought him, Hobart steeled himself to his task. “I’ve come to tell you—” he hesitated, perhaps disturbed by the motion of her hand as she brushed the careless waves of red hair that fell across her bare shoulder. She was beautifully dressed. That gown of sapphires only accentuated her loveliness.

  “You started to say—”

  “Oh, yes—about that Temple of Music—”

  “Yes?” Her eyes were suddenly eager, like a child’s when a gift is about to be unwrapped. Then her intent manner vanished, her lips lost their smile, her eyes anticipated disappointment. She quickly turned to Rustan, asked, “Does your master ever explain his grudge against me?”

  The young magistrate countered with a turn of the subject. He shot a blunt question that put Venzita on her metal. “Why do you want to string all the magistrates? Why don’t you choose one and marry him?”

  “I—I wouldn’t think of it!” she uttered breathlessly.

  “There!” said Hobart vindictively. “You admit you’re playing a game. You’re letting them make love to you when you’ve no intention of—”

  “They’re not making love to me!”

  “They’re giving you gifts!”

  “Yes—that is, Janetto—”

  “They’re proposing to you, aren’t they?”

  “Some of them have—”

  “How many?”

  “Well, fourteen or fifteen. But I don’t take it seriously. Most of them are already married, and I haven’t the slightest affection for them—that way, I mean. They’re friends, of course, but—”

  “You’re cheating them!” Hobart cried. He was on his feet now, pointing an accusing finger at her. “You’re leading them on—”

  “I’m not!” Venzita sprang up and started away.

  “Wait!” Hobart snapped, following her. He caught her hand. “Young lady,” a little of the harshness went out of his voice, “you needn’t try to deny it. You’re practicing the art of an enchantress. You’re making it your business to weave a spell around every male that comes your way. You’re exercising a magic power—”

  “You lie!”

  Another voice broke in—the low rich voice of Rustan. “I think he’s right, Miss Venzita. At least that’s the way the Rag Birds have got it figured.”

  “Rus—sir!” the girl gasped. She looked at him, transfixed. She was unaware that Hobart was still holding her hand, gripping it a little tighter as she tried to draw it away.

  “The Rag Birds say you must be different from other women,” Rustan pursued. “You’ll never want to marry. You’ll only want to make men your slaves.”

  “No! No! NO!” Glistening tears filled the girl’s eyes. The words terrified her. “You don’t understand!” she cried. “I want to love and be loved, the sa
me as anyone else. But—”

  “But what?” Hobart demanded.

  Her answer came in a low breathless whisper. “What chance have I had to be myself? All I’ve learned since Janetto undertook to train me has made me what I am. I’ve no desire to be an enchantress. But every song I sing, every word I say seems to make men fall at my feet.”

  “And you scorn them!” said Hobart. “Janetto has drilled me in the arts of eluding them, teasing them with songs and laughter, and keeping out of their reach like a butterfly. It’s all that I know to do.”

  At that moment a door far down the hall opened and Dr. Albert Janetto emerged. He was returning from a vision.

  The three fell silent as he approached the arched entrance of the music room. He gazed in, said nothing. Venzita noticed that he was strangely pale. She wondered what vision had come to him.

  “Will you join us, Albert?” she called to him. “Mr. Hobart and his bodyguard have come to bring us a message about the—” She stopped, her words choked down.

  “About the Temple of Music,” Dr. Janetto,” said Hobart.

  Janetto nodded weakly. He waited. “Well, what is the message?”

  “What is the message, Mr. Hobart?” Venzita repeated timorously, her fingers light upon his hand.

  Hobart’s eyes passed over her lightly and turned to Janetto. “By my vote,” he said tonelessly, “the appropriation has passed. The Temple of Music will be built—in honor of Venzita.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  A Visitor in the Night

  From that night Dr. Albert Janetto’s manner became a puzzle. With passing weeks his top-of-the-world spirit was eclipsed in a fog that grew blacker.

  “Is Dr. Janetto ill?” the servants would ask Venzita. “Is he afraid of something?”

  Venzita had no answer. The little old man in the wheelchair volunteered no information about his worries. She asked no questions.

  In fact, she avoided talking with him, and when they dined with visiting magistrates their eyes did not meet.

  The servants’ gossip ran to weird terrorized whisperings. Nor was their talk all concerned with Dr. Janetto. The beautiful Venzita came in for her share of their remarks.

  “Her music is growing flat.”

  “Not flat—low!”

  “Low—flat—it’s all the same. Anyhow the spirit’s gone out of it.”

  “She’s quit practicing—spends all her time in her room.”

  In her room Venzita would ponder the question that she did not dare to confide in Janetto’s visions. She was afraid of the answer.

  Were Hobart and Rustan right? Was she an enchantress, playing a game, tossing men’s hearts round like dice?

  Over and over that conversation reechoed in her ears. She avoided facing herself in the mirror. She would stray along the railing of the roof-garden, looking down listlessly upon the expanse of city.

  Even those miserable outcasts clustered like vultures in the trees held her in scorn!

  And the more respectable classes— the ones who paid taxes into the city’s treasury—were beginning to talk, she knew. They were angry over that three million dollar appropriation. They were petitioning for a delay in the clearance of the site for the New Temple of Music.

  How far would their protests go? How soon would their hatreds infect the magistrates themselves?

  And what had the dashing young Hobart reported back to his fifteen fellow-magistrates? Probably he had knocked the props out from under every man of them who secretly hoped to marry her. He had only to quote her own words!

  But Hobart would have added embellishments of his own. No doubt about that! She could almost hear him saying, “She’s a cheat! She’ll never have an ounce of love for any man. That damned little old wizard’s tricks have crushed all of that out of her.”

  Twilight came over the city. Venzita lingered out on the roof garden looking up at the deep blue summer sky. A servant came to remind her that supper would be served at her pleasure; the doctor had already eaten and returned to his visions. Venzita was not interested.

  She lay in the hammock watching wisps of silver-edged clouds sift across the stars. She thought back to the summer when she had worked for two short weeks on a farm in the Blue Valley—side by side with Rustan.

  She had been herself back in those days. No one could have made her believe she would ever be surrounded by all this fabulous world of wealth and finery. Why had it come to her? Could it be that she was an enchantress, gifted with a special sort of magic power to make men do her bidding?

  “If so—if this is true—”

  The turmoil of thought carried her deep into the night before she completed that sentence.

  “If that’s true, I might as well make the most of it!”

  And suddenly her mind was filled with a wish, too terrible and ghastly to pass her lips. If she could make men do her bidding—yes—yes—yes!

  A little whirr sounded from the air just beyond the roof garden. Venzita thought it must be a nighthawk coasting down out of the sky.

  It came again—and stopped with a solid click. She ran to the railing, discovered that a loop of lithe rope had caught upon a steel post. The rope extended straight down into the night shadows of the temple wall. Someone had tossed that loop up from below.

  Yes, there was a uniformed figure climbing up the rope. In a moment he was over the railing, standing tall and straight before her. He called her by name, a name she had almost forgotten, “Mary!”

  “Rustan!” How fine and handsome he was in that guardsman’s uniform, complete with scabbard and sword. She led him into a path of light, gazed at him. Every trace of the shaggy Rag Bird was gone. This was a new Rustan. Disturbingly new. Venzita would have given anything in the world to see a little of the old friendly gleam in his eyes.

  “Mary,” he whispered hoarsely. “I had to come. Don’t think for a minute that you’ve charmed me here the way you do the magistrates. I’m made of different stuff, Mary. I’ve been a drifter, a rebel, a Rag Bird—and I’m too hard-boiled ever to be knocked off my pegs by any feminine wiles. But I had to come—to warn you!”

  “What is it, Rustan?”

  “If you’ve got a grain of honesty left in you, Mary, for God’s sakes run away from this place.”

  Venzita gasped. “Run away—with a three million dollar honor about to be built for me?”

  “How are you ever going to get out of this trap, Mary?”

  The girl did not answer until she had cast a cautious eye over the dimly lighted roof-porch. She spoke in a low voice. “Some day Janetto will die, Rustan.” Her eyes held his in a tense grip. “When that happens, this tangled web I’ve walked into will dissolve.”

  “He’ll die—” It was Rustan’s eyes that held hers. “You’re sure that—” His sentence was lost in a moment of audible breathing. She felt his strong hands close tightly upon hers, felt the sharp scrutiny of his gaze.

  He said, “Where is Janetto?”

  “In the vision room.”

  “I’d like to see him.”

  “He’s in no mood to receive visitors. Besides, he may stay with his visions until dawn.”

  “I’ll wait,” said Rustan. “I don’t often get away from Hobart. And it was no cinch getting in here past your guards. I’ve got to make this trip count.”

  Venzita led him through the palace halls. A servant stopped them near the vision room door with a sharp bark. “He’s not to be disturbed, Miss Venzita.”

  “We won’t disturb him,” the girl retorted. “Mr. Rustan will wait.”

  “This is very irregular, Miss Venzita,” the servant protested. “The guards were not supposed to admit any guests. It’s an hour past midnight.”

  “Time for you to be off duty,” Venzita snapped.

  The servant nodded. “My apologies, Miss—”

  “See that Mr. Rustan is made comfortable while he waits,” she ordered. “I’ll return to the roof garden.”

  The servant bent over backwards to compl
y. He took Rustan’s cap, coat, sword and scabbard to the hall-tree; he supplied Rustan with a cool drink, a newspaper, an electric fan. Then, hoping that everything was satisfactory, he retired.

  Venzita returned to the roof garden alone. She preferred to leave Rustan to his own devices. Obviously he was bitter in his determination to keep himself outside the grasp of her power. But would he?

  An hour passed. She glanced in, saw him sauntering along gazing idly at the paintings on the corridor walls. He drifted into the drawing room. She returned to the railing under the stars— listening, waiting.

  At length the gray of dawn showed on the horizon. She heard Rustan’s footsteps.

  “I can’t afford to wait any longer,” he muttered. “In fact, I realize it’s too late to talk with him.”

  Again that sharp exchange of glances, crystal clear in the hazy darkness, like the passing of secrets no words could fathom.

  “Perhaps everything has been done that can be,” Venzita breathed.

  “I’m sure of it.”

  Rustan clutched her hand for an instant, then thrust himself away. He climbed over the edge of the railing, let himself down hand-over-hand by the rope.

  Venzita’s eyes followed him. In the dim light she saw the faint gleam of his scabbard—saw that it was empty!

  “Your sword, Rustan!” she gasped. “Where—”

  Then she caught her breath. He hadn’t heard. But he must have known—

  CHAPTER IX

  Murder

  The following forenoon a guardsman’s sword was found jammed solidly through Dr. Albert Janetto’s chest. The point of the blade showed sharp and bright through the back of the wheel-chair.

  The little old figure looked more mystical than ever, his thick eyelids puffed out deathly white within the rims of black lashes, his little black beard stabbing out arrogantly from his chin.