as he clambered out of the gondola of his air yacht and walked stiffly home to the Rathaus. His wife had already set off for Paris aboard the liner
He hung up his tunic and used the telephone above his dressing table to talk to his housekeeper, telling her that he would dine in his own room that night, and asking her to send up bread, cold meat, a glass of beer. As he returned to the door to check that he had not locked it, he noticed a face staring at him from the pile of papers on the bed.
He picked up the photograph, wondering what on earth it was doing there, among the tedious, typewritten transcripts of Browne’s speech. A woman’s face. It took him a moment to realize that this was what Varley had stuffed into his pocket in the park. In all the misery of the afternoon’s planning sessions, he had almost forgotten that seedy air trader. Now he grew furious. To think that a slaver was operating within a few miles of Murnau, which had never had anything to do with slavery, and had always made it a point of honor to free the slaves of every town it ate! And to think that Varley could imagine that he, von Kobold, would be interested in buying the poor, miserable-looking waif in this picture!
Photo in hand, he strode back to the telephone, winding the handle furiously and shouting at the startled operator to put him through at once to his chief of security. While he waited for the man to answer, he fumbled his spectacles on and looked more closely at the photograph. The girl was an easterner; dirty, bruised, huge eyed with fear. She seemed faintly familiar, though Kobold could not think why. That small, vulnerable mouth, those crooked teeth…
He remembered, suddenly, where he had seen her before. Intelligence had sent him pictures of General Naga’s wedding. The bride in her red finery. Thick, black brows and tilted cheekbones. That mouth.
“Herr Kriegsmarschall?” crackled the telephone. “What is it?”
Kobold hesitated, still staring at the photograph. “Nothing, Schiller,” he said softly. “It doesn’t matter.”
He returned the telephone gently to its cradle, then took a pistol from the dressing-table drawer, buckled on his heavy fighting sword, and put on the precious Kevlar body armor that his enemy had sent him all those years ago. He did not usually bother with armor, but it seemed appropriate that Naga’s gift should protect him when he went to rescue Naga’s wife.
He pulled a greatcoat on over the top and ran down the stairs, past the housemaid who was coming up with his dinner. “Sorry, my dear,” he told her. “Change of plan.” But he took the beer, drinking it as he hurried down to his private docking pan. The ground crew were moving his yacht
“Tonight, sir?”
“Not much fuel in her tanks, sir.”
“I don’t need much,” said the kriegsmarschall. “I’m only going up to Airhaven.”
“Nobody of that name here,” said the clerk at the Empyrean Hotel. A dusty argon globe buzzed and flickered, light fluttering over threadbare carpets and tobacco-colored walls. Stairs went up into shadow. “Nice place,” muttered Theo.
Hester leaned across the receptionist’s desk. Behind her veil her blunt profile looked as hard as a fist. Theo was afraid that she was going to do something terrible to the insolent young man in the pillbox hat, but she just said, “You’re sure?
“Oh, I know who he is, lady,” said the clerk, with the same witless grin. “Everyone’s heard of Pennyroyal. But we ain’t got no one of that name staying here.”
“I just saw him leave,” said Hester. “A fat man. Old. Bald.”
“That was just Mr. Unterberg,” said the clerk. “A commercial gentleman from Murnau, staying in room 128. He said he was popping round to the harbor office to— Look, here he is now!”
Hester and Theo both turned as the lobby door opened, letting in the noise of rowdy parties from the High Street bars, a few lost moths, and the man they were looking for. He had shaved off his beard, put on blue-tinted spectacles, and swapped his usual fine clothes for the dowdy pinstriped robes of a commercial traveler, but Hester and Theo recognized him at once.
“Oh, great Poskitt!” he gasped as they went to meet him. “Oh, Clio! Oh, ruddy Nora!”
“We’d like a little chat,” Hester explained.
She expected him to scream for help, to call for the police and Airhaven militia. After all, last time they’d met, Hester had tried to murder him, and only her softhearted daughter had stopped her. But Pennyroyal seemed more frightened of the clerk at the front desk than of her. He peeked nervously past her at the youth (who was watching wide-eyed, with his mouth hanging open) and hissed, “We can’t talk here!”
“Your room then,” said Hester.
Pennyroyal obeyed meekly enough, fetching his passkey from the astonished clerk and motioning for Theo and Hester to follow him up the stairs. Hester couldn’t help feeling she had missed something. She had never met anyone as pleased with himself as Nimrod Pennyroyal. Why would he pretend to be someone else?
Room 128 was on the top floor: sloping ceilings, a tap dripping into a grimy metal handbasin, empty wine bottles on every level surface. Pennyroyal sank into a wicker chair beside the window. Hester let Theo in and kicked the door shut behind him.
“If you’ve come looking for Tom and Wren,” the old man whimpered, “they took off days ago. Gone north, on some job for a fellow named Wolf Kobold.”
“Tom and Wren were here?” asked Theo.
Hester seemed disconcerted by this sudden news of her family. She stared at Pennyroyal for a moment, started to say something, stopped, and then recovered herself and snapped, “That’s not why we came. We need money, Pennyroyal.”
Pennyroyal let out a humorless bark, like a seal with bronchitis. “Money? You’ve come to me for money? Hal Never been much of a reader, have you, Hester? Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Why do you think I’m hiding in this dump?” He crouched down and pulled a tattered newspaper from beneath the heap of empty bottles and discarded socks under the bed. Shoving it at Hester and Theo, he said bitterly, “See? I’m ruined! Ruined! And it’s all thanks to that daughter of yours!”
The paper was called
Theo took the paper and leafed quickly through the first few pages. “ ‘Many experts have long believed that “Professor” Pennyroyal’s archaeological work is suspect,’ ” he read. “ ‘No proof has ever surfaced to support “Professor” Pennyroyal’s stories of his adventures in America and Nuevo-Maya…’ ” Then he turned to the end of the
