tribe, a small and select group who lived for centuries in the Rhodesian bush.'
'Were?' I fastened on the word. 'What happened to them?'
'They are almost extinct by now. Earthquakes destroyed our village and nearly all the inhabitants some twenty years ago. Only two families survived. Mine and one other. Since then the old people have died off. The only ones left are myself – unfortunately an only child – and the offspring of the other family. And the other family had no sons. Only five daughters. Thus it fell to me to see to it that the Balulwa were perpetuated. Since the five girls are all attractive, that wasn't hard to do at first. But their sexual demands grew insatiable and eventually I was forced to flee from them. That's when I came to Salisbury and then went from there to
England for my education. But those five girls of the Bulalwa tribe are still waiting there for my return.'
'And will you go back?'
'Eventually. It is my duty. And my pleasure, I admit. But when I go back it will be to die. The five of them will kill me with their lust.'
'There are worse ways to go,' I told him.
Amen! It came in the form of a sudden burst of tommygun fire, a rat-a-tat demonstration of one of those 'worse ways'. We'd been cruising up a long avenue and traffic was light when the limousine shot out of a side street and the fusillade was loosed at us. Only our hairpin-triggered reflexes kept Lagula and I from proving the point with our lives. Only by diving for the floorboards of the car did we avoid instant corpsedom.
With Lagula no longer at the wheel, the car spun out of control. It mounted the sidewalk, cut a neat swath across a wide lawn, and kept going to shear down a row of low bushes. Throughout, the other car paralleled our erratic route in the gutter and continued to spray us with bullets.
'Jump!' Lagula yelled as we kept going toward the brick wall of a house. 'And run in different directions,' he added.
It made sense. If we separated, the gunman would have to split his fire between two moving targets. We'd each have a better chance of getting away that way, too, since the car couldn't follow us both.
As it turned out, fortunately, it couldn't follow either one of us. I dived out and turned a somersault. As I came up, I saw Lagula skidding across the turf on his belly. He sprang up and kept going in a crouching run, bullets kicking up the dirt at his heels, but not catching up with him before he'd gained the shelter of a hedgerow. By the time he vanished behind the hedges, I was sprinting around the side of the house our car had rammed. The killer car was unable to stay with either of us and it roared off in frustration.
I kept running, cutting through backyards and alleys, avoiding the streets. After a half-hour or so of this, I was pretty winded. I slowed and cautiously went down a long driveway leading to another avenue. As I neared the mouth of it, I saw something that made me flatten myself against the garage wall and stare across the street.
A car was just easing into the curb there. I recognized the car. It was the same one which had just been spewing hot lead at me.
It stopped and a man got out of the back. He was carrying – so help me! – a violin case. I didn't have to think back to Jimmy Cagney movies to know this was no Heifetz toting a Stradivarius to Carnegie Hall. It was corny, but there it was. Chicago had shipped a reincarnation of Al Capone to sunny, fun-filled Salisbury.
The man stepped aside and another man emerged from the rear of the car. He too was carrying something, a large package of some sort; I couldn't tell what it was. The first man climbed back inside and the car pulled away. The other, left standing on the sidewalk, turned to watch it go, and I saw his face clearly for the first time.
It was Peter Highman!
My mind was still absorbing this as Highman hefted his package and strolled up the walk to the building entrance opposite which the car had dropped him. It was a small building, and when I approached it myself after he'd gone inside, I saw that it housed a sort of combination museum and art gallery. A group of five or six well- dressed people entered it after Highman, and I fell in close behind him.
I followed them as they moved slowly through a series of cubicles with paintings, sculptures, and other art objects arranged in them. There was no sign of Highman. Off one of the cubicles, I noticed a staircase leading to the second floor of the gallery. I broke away from the group and mounted it.
I found myself in a large lecture hall. It was empty. At the far end was another door like the one leading from the staircase. I crossed over and opened it. Now I was in a narrow hallway. There were two or three doors leading off it, and from the open transom above one of them I heard voices. One of the voices was Highman's.
'Make sure it doesn't get to the airport until the last possible moment,' Highman was saying. 'But remember that it must be on that midnight plane.'
'But where will I keep it until then?' the other voice asked. 'It's too big for the safe. And I can't have a thing like this just lying around.'
In Salisbury, the doors are old-fashioned – conveniently old-fashioned. They have keyholes – nice, big keyholes. This door outside which I was eavesdropping was no exception. So I made the most of it, squashing my nose against the door as I stooped to peer into the room.
The object they were discussing was on the desk directly opposite the keyhole. I had a perfect view of it. I recognized it immediately, although I'd never seen it before. I would have known it anywhere from Singh Huy-eva's description. It was the gold-encrusted, multi-jeweled phallus which had been hacked off the Nepalese god-idol!
I could appreciate that they had a problem. Four feet of jeweled genitals isn't exactly an easy thing to hide. I mean, they couldn't exactly play 'Purloined Letter' with it, or anything like that. And it was too valuable to just shove in a drawer or a closet somewhere.
But Highman had an answer. 'There's a lock on the door of that refrigerator down in the basement, isn't there? Well, put it in there. And don't let the key out of your possession.'
I jumped away from the door and flattened myself against the wall as they came out. They didn't see me. When they'd passed through the door leading to the lecture auditorium at the end of the hallway, I slipped into the room they'd left.
I thought I'd have a fast look around and see what I could see. I saw nothing. It was a perfectly ordinary office with nothing incriminating around. Its interest had dimmed with the departure of the jeweled phallus in Highman's arms.
I glanced out the window just in time to see Highman leave the building. My face broke into a grin as I saw Vlankov, the Russian agent, step out of a doorway and start to tail Highman down the street. The grin grew wider – if a bit puzzled – as I spotted a third man fall in all too casually behind Vlankov and start to tail him.
I didn't waste any time trying to figure this third man's angle. I figured I'd better get out of the office before Highman's playmate returned. But what should my next move be?
On the spur of the moment, I came up with an answer. I decided to have a try at retrieving that jeweled phallus. If I succeeded, I'd be doing Singh a favor, I'd be bugging S.M.U.T., and I'd be forcing Highman to come to me – which just might be a step in the direction of finding Dr. Nyet.
I found my way down to the basement without any trouble. The refrigerator unit was right there, in plain sight, a large steel box that looked impregnable. It was fastened with a stout chain and a heavy lock.
What now? I might have been able to blow it with nitro, but – wouldn't you know it? – I'd left my nitro in my other suit or someplace. If I'd had the skill, maybe I could have picked the lock. But, despite my checkered background, that was one knack I hadn't picked up. Well then, there was always muscle.
I found a poker hanging beside the furnace. Made of iron, it was a natural crowbar. It was too thick to work into the lock itself, but I just managed to wedge it between the links of the chain. Teeth gritting, muscles bulging, adrenal glands pumping, I strained with all my might. Finally, something gave. Me.
I stood back and looked at the goddamn chain. All my prying hadn't opened it so much as a centimeter. I cursed and smacked the crowbar against its linky teeth. That would teach it to kick sand in my face! But it only grinned back at me, undented by the blow.
My money-back guarantee from Charles Atlas having run out, I decided there was no point in my continuing to rail against my physical shortcomings. I faced the fact that I wasn't going to be able to bust the chain. And I put my brain to work to find another way of getting at the refrigerated genitalia. The thing to do, I finally decided, was to find the man with the key, wave my gun under his schnozzola, and make him unlock the freezebox. I decided to wait for nightfall when the gallery would presumably be closed and there wouldn't be anybody around to get in my way. So I curled up behind the unlit furnace and dozed the afternoon away.
When I woke up, the small cellar window told me it was night. I went upstairs and found the gallery closed and
