(The house lights come on, as we holster our weapons, and for an unobstructed moment gain a clear view of Penny Priddy. Almost as one, we gasp. What intended treachery is this? She is amazingly the mirror image of our dead Peggy!)
My eyes immediately darted to Buckaroo, the poor devil. What must he think? A queer look on his face, he was in immediate consultation with Rawhide, who quickly left the hall to pursue the secret of the girl.
“Did you see her?” he asked us.
I consequently shrugged, not wanting to believe what I had seen with my own eyes. It was the same with the others, the shock to our nerves leaving us spellbound and speechless. After all, the very idea was incomprehensible. We must have been seeing things. I myself suspected at once the malevolent genius of Xan somehow in this but said instead, “Your piano playing gets them every time, Buckaroo.”
He nodded, stabbing thoughts testing his sanity. “I heard someone crying. I must have had a premonition,” he said.
“Must have.” I nodded. “I don’t know what else it could’ve been.”
A numb feeling tugged at my heart. Either someone had embarked upon a hellish scheme against our chief, or cruel Fate had made him its sport. Either way he would have no surcease of bitter memories for sleepless nights to come.
13
Following the discovery of the night guard’s body and the disappearance of the inmate known as Dr. Emilio Lizardo, a furious hunt for the callous criminal was immediately organized. Airports and train stations were watched, roadblocks erected; but in vain. Although the stolen sports car was found in a rural county of the state wrapped around an electric light standard, it seemed that death would have none of Whorfin. He had walked away from the violent collision and headed straight to a telephone.
“Operator,” he shouted. “I want to place a person-to-person call, collect, to John Bigbooté, Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems, Grover’s Mills, New Jersey. Tell him it’s John Whorfin calling, from the outside. W-H-O-R-F-I-N. Got that?”
He had to wait several minutes, as his party, the alien Lectroid called John Bigbooté, had to be found and roused from sleep, a circumstance which only confirmed in Whorfin’s mind the timeliness, nay, the necessity, of his escape. Clearly his fighters, once fearsome to behold, had grown enfeebled. It pained him to think it, but even the cold mouth of the grave, even the hideous Eighth Dimension (its Planet 10 name) was preferable to the bourgeois life of ease. Nothing good could come of years of peace—muscles atrophied, the will failed. Soldiers who had once fought back-to-back fell to bickering among themselves amid the creature comforts. No, it was best he had arrived. He would make inquiries, establish the iron discipline needed. He would make examples! Yes, there was much to be done and little time.
The groggy voice of John Bigbooté came on the line, almost whining, it seemed to John Whorfin. “What’s the matter, John Bigbooté?” he said tersely. “Did I take you from something important?”
“No, I was just getting some snooze.”
“What kind of language is that?” Whorfin screamed “Snap to attention when I talk to you! I’ll have your head! Prepare for my return!”
Bigbooté seemed to revive, understanding that this was not a mere social call. Far from his original muttering tone of voice, he now began to purr. “Lord Whorfin, my liege, this is the happiest night of my life,” he sputtered. “Where are you?”
“Camped by the side of the road,” rejoined Whorfin. “You’ll send a car.”
“Yes, of course, but—”
“What?”
“Isn’t there danger? I am concerned about your safety.”
“Be concerned about your own. Things had better be in order.”
“Of course. I’ll be right there.”
Whorfin gave him the location and hung up the phone, rubbing his hands together. He had thinking to do, plans to create. There was a saying on Planet 10, “No positive edifice can be built on a negative foundation.” First he had to get Banzai’s OSCILLATION OVERTHRUSTER and then work his Lectroids into a fury to complete the Panther Ship being built secretly at Yoyodyne. By morning, he would be at his place, back where he belonged at the head of his paltry band of fighters on this worthless blue planet named Earth. What had to follow would not be easy. He did not underestimate his formidable array of adversaries who would do all they could to thwart him, once his plans became known. Secrecy must be the foremost consideration. Accordingly, he stepped away from the deserted country road for the cover of a tree. The night was clear, the location of Planet 10, his home, hidden by the bright edge of the moon. Somewhere up there as well, his hated nemesis, the Nova Police, were on constant patrol. How much did they know? he wondered. Had they been alerted to his presence on Earth? God, how he hated this place! Better to die fighting, to be torn to pieces and scattered like cosmic dust throughout the universe than to be standing here under a tree in New Jersey.
A thought came to mind. It was Lizardo’s thought, wild and beautiful as it was. Something about the little Jap, Hikita. Whorfin laughed, his cackle echoing in the stillness, as he seized upon the idea before Lizardo could take it back. “Too late, Lizardo,” he gloated. “Good idea.”
In the chaos of the escape, he had nearly forgotten about Lizardo: now, his fancy excited, he probed the disorder of the old man’s mind. “So you think the little Jap Hikita might be able to get me the Overthruster? I hadn’t thought of that. In turn, he could be my key to getting off this rock. Is that what you’re thinking? Nice work. That means I’d be leaving you, and you could get on with your life.”
“What life?” snorted Lizardo. “You’ve taken my life, you indolent maggot! You parasite!”
“But you’d be your old self again. You’d have your old body . . . er, young body back again.”
Poor Lizardo’s lip trembled. “What do you mean?”
“Why, I mean in the Eighth Dimension your body’s just where you left it—young, just as it was that day in ’38. How old were you then?”
Lizardo’s mind was reeling. For half a minute he could not think or speak. “Twenty-five,” he said.
“Then that’s how old you’d be again. Twenty-five . . . your whole life ahead of you. Vibrant and young! You could marry, have children, gain the fame that rightfully should be yours.”
“More probably than not you’re lying.”
“Help me prove it, Emilio.” Lizardo wished at all costs to believe such a thing but could not, trying desperately to pull away as Whorfin reached around their body to clasp hands. “Help me return to the Eighth Dimension with the Overthruster. You have knowledge you’ve never given me. I know it! Why resist me when youth and boundless energy await you?”
“What is this talk? A trick?” exclaimed the besieged Lizardo, who with a sudden cry grabbed a stick and struck himself a feeble blow to the head. “I’ll kill myself and take you with me—rid creation of you once and for all!”
Whorfin, much the dominant one, easily dealt him a disabling blow. “You’re too late,” he sneered. “You should have thought of that sooner. Without the medication I am in control all the time. There can be no deliverance for you now, not even an hour a day. You have plighted your troth to me for the rest of your miserable life, unless I get that Overthruster and return to my natural body in the Eighth Dimension!”
Lizardo despaired anew, trying to draw the materials to defy him, but it was hopeless. He was in the villain’s embrace and knew the power of the bear hug.
14
Nor had the long night ended where we were concerned. At the Banzai Institute, the lights were burning into the early morning hours when Rawhide arrived and Perfect Tommy and I cornered him.
“What did you find out?” we demanded to know.
‘Where’s Buckaroo?” said Rawhide.
“Upstairs. Did you see the girl?”
Rawhide nodded. “It wasn’t difficult. She’s in the hoosegow.”
We waited for more. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
&nbs
p; “What does she look like?”
Rawhide paused. He could be exasperating at times! “Well—”
“Out with it, great fellow!” I blurted, unable to contain my curiosity.
“She looks like Peggy.”
“How much like her?”
With a grave face, he pushed up the brim of his hat. “Exactly like her,” he said. “Bewitchingly so.”
The three of us traded looks, making no pretense of the fact that we were worried. I had captured only a glimpse of her in the club, and had thus been able to delude myself into thinking that I was mistaken, and the others, probably including Buckaroo, had done the same. But now there was more, as wildly far-fetched as the idea seemed, for Rawhide was not given to exaggeration.
“How close did you get to her?” asked Tommy.
“As close as I am to you.”
“Then we’ll have to put the comb through her,” I said. “We must find out what she is.”
“Her name is Penny Priddy,” said Rawhide. “She’s from Wyoming, thirty years old. I got her vital statistics from her driver’s license.”
“Then we should run her through Interpol at once to be sure it isn’t a trap,” proposed Tommy.
We agreed hard routine inquiry would be the order of business. Tommy suggested we involve Mrs. Johnson in the case at once, as well as our team of computer sleuths headed by Billy Travers. If there was going to be an error of judgment on our part, it was to be on the side of caution. If the girl was shamming her identity, we would know soon enough and could take the appropriate countermeasures.
In the meantime there was the matter of Buckaroo. “What are you going to tell the chief?” I asked Rawhide.
“The truth,” he replied.
We all agreed it was as good a plan as any.
15
In the adventure Extradition from Hell, I apply myself to the evidence in Peggy’s murder. Although the case received front-page play, for those coming to the Banzai series for the first time, I shall attempt to recapitulate the facts as briefly as possible. Half an hour after her marriage to B. Banzai, Peggy Banzai, nee Simpson, was discovered dead in a changing room just off the sacristy in the Church of St. John the Divine in New York City. She had entered the room quickly to undress following the ceremony, and despite the presence of sentries outside (who neither saw nor heard anything suspicious), minutes later she was found lifeless and prone on the floor, still in her wedding dress. The postmortem performed by the coroner found the cause of death to be poisoning by cyanide gas, the source of which was discovered in one of the many floral arrangements sent by well-wishers. A small metal cylinder of cyanide dropped in a flower vase filled with sulfuric acid and yellow roses had done the trick. As she bent over to smell the roses, one whiff of the deadly gas had extinguished her life instantly. Such were the meager facts of the case.
As for the culprit or culprits, none was visible; and the praiseworthy efforts of the authorities produced none, save for the ghostly curate rumoured to haunt said church. He, or it, had been seen in an acute state of agitation by several of the wedding guests and by Captain Happen and Pecos who actually conversed soberly with the black-robed shade! In the way of mortal suspects, however, the trail had run cold. The European manufacturer of the cyanide cylinder and the Brooklyn florist through whom the roses had been ordered could provide little information of value, and that is where the investigation had foundered when B. Banzai decided to engage the services of a well-known psychic, Georgiana Albricht of the Duke University Department of Parapsychology, whom he had tested in the past. A series of seances took place subsequently, the first in the Church of St. John the Divine, followed by several more at the Banzai Institute, held under controlled scientific conditions. I reproduce here edited excerpts from the last one, dated 5 November 1981. The reader will note the presence of Captain Happen in the room, something Buckaroo had insisted upon, aware of Captain Happen’s great interest in the paranormal.
(G. Albricht changes moods, the sound of footsteps arousing her to a highly wrought state of tension, as a shiver comes over us all . . . the footsteps descending, as though on an invisible stairway in the ice cold room. G. Albricht begins to write in her folio volume, murmuring as in a deep sleep, her cheeks flushed.)
G. Albricht:
I have before me a lost spirit with a trouble and anxiety which prevent it from taking its heavenward flight. What is your mortal name, spirit?
(A terrible female chuckle is heard.)
G. Albricht:
Speak, spirit, unless your misery be unutterable. What is your name?
Spirit Voice:
Peggy Banzai.
(Captain Happen appears agitated, jumps up from his seat.)
Captain Happen:
That’s a lie! This wizard’s a phony!
Buckaroo Banzai:
Sit down, Captain.
Captain Happen:
I’m leaving.
Buckaroo Banzai:
I’d rather you stayed. No one leaves.
(Pecos and I bar the door; Captain Happen refuses to return to his seat, paces nervously.)
G. Albricht:
Spirit, will you emerge into view?
(At the back of the room, all of us detect a growing obstrusive fragrance.)
Rawhide:
Smell it? It’s Peggy’s perfume.
Captain Happen:
It’s impossible. It smells more like cyanide!
Pecos:
My God, it’s her! There she is!
(Where the musty scent has emanated, a pale light now appears, in the midst of which stands a female figure in Peggy’s shimmering white wedding dress, her bridal veil draping her face, a bouquet of withered flowers in her grasp! We all shrink from the unearthly visage, but in particular Captain Happen, who, as someone whose secret of sin has just been uncovered, cries out like a fiend.)
Captain Happen:
It’s not real! It’s some magician’s trick! Buckaroo—
(The bride of death now produces a gleaming dagger from the withered bouquet and begins to move toward us.)
G. Albricht:
Spirit, you would do violence to those who love you?
Spirit Voice:
One does not love me. I would fain have my revenge.
Captain Happen:
No! It’s not Peggy! Peggy’s alive! They’ve foxed me! I can’t breathe!
(With those cryptic words, he makes a run for the door, Pecos and I leveling our pistols to stop him, when suddenly the young man’s mind snaps before our eyes and he hurls himself out the window instead, breaking his neck on the sidewalk three floors below. Buckaroo comes over, looks out the window grimly, as Pecos rushes down the stairs and confirms the lifeless attitude of the body.)
Reno:
On his belly like a reptile, where he belongs.
Pecos:
He’s dead.
(Buckaroo himself turns on the lights and thanks the participants in our little midnight charade: Georgina Albricht, who is as accomplished an actress as she is a medium, and of course the unhappy shade in white, who, upon raising her bridal veil and removing her wig, turns out to be none other than our own Mrs. Johnson.)
Mrs. Johnson:
I don’t mind telling you, this thing gave me the creeps.
As I have said, the seance was carried out under controlled scientific conditions . . . controlled to our advantage. The autopsy performed on Captain Happen revealed a miniature radio receiver implanted surgically in his brain, through which he got his orders, almost certainly from Xan, as the same principle—that of converting man into puppet through a similar device—was to be employed with continued devastating success in his infamous death dwarves. And what of Captain Happen’s astonishing statement that Peggy was alive? Permission was promptly obtained from the necessary authorities to exhume the body of Peggy from the Banzai family plot in Texas, and on a windy day several of us stood at the grave as the casket, bare of ornamentation, was brought up and the
simple lid opened to allow the escape of gasses and to disclose . . . nothing! The cavity was empty! It seemed we had buried a phantom.
It was against this inexplicable backdrop that the remarkable discovery of Penny Priddy must be seen. She had, wittingly or unwittingly, reopened that vacant crypt beneath the clods and with it raised the bare thought: Had Peggy returned?
There was still a quenchless gleam in B. Banzai’s eyes, though since the departure (a word I prefer) of Peggy, his affairs had become more disordered. For weeks following the black events of New York and their bizarre aftermath, I would find him, a miserable object, in the dark receptacle of his study. Wearing his spectacles, hunched over some recondite volume, he gave the appearance of an infirm old man, a pale imitation of himself that no mediocre actor could have improved upon. With a constant fixed gaze, he seemed unconscious of all but his innermost soul.
True, of late, we had become reassured that his former aspect had returned—but now this. It was no wonder that with this twist of fate we feared that all of our brightening prospects were in jeopardy.
Buckaroo stood in his small, almost bare cell at the upper rear of our transmuted Greyhound Scenicruiser bus as we made our way to the jail the morning after. It was there he was to meet the fair maid Penny Priddy and we were to rendezvous with a potential new recruit—not necessarily one and the same, I remember hoping. There was still nothing from Pecos and the Seminole Kid, all our efforts to get through still stymied by radio interference. Perhaps they were merely lost, or lost in more ways than one. The concern on my face must have been evident, for a sad quiet smile flitted across Perfect Tommy’s lips.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Page 7
