In The House Of Secret Enemies

Shifting all my weight onto my right arm, I tensed and kicked out with my instep at the exposed side of his left knee. It popped with a metallic sound of breaking joints and tearing ligaments. Boise dropped like a felled tree, his gaping mouth wrapped around a long, meandering scream. The gun clattered to the floor and bounced in Mueller's direction. Mueller belatedly reached down for it and got me instead. I slapped him across the bridge of the nose. He sat down hard. I stood and placed the end of the gun in his ear. I pulled the hammer back, and Mueller made a retching sound.

'Get up, Mueller, don't throw up,' I said evenly. 'You do and I'll kill you. Think about that.'

Mueller put his hand over his mouth and struggled to his feet. I glanced at Boise, who lay on his side holding his shattered knee. His eyes had the dull sheen of cheap pottery. I turned back to Mueller.

'The drugs,' I said. 'I want samples of whatever it was you put into Garth and me.'

Mueller's head bounced up and down like a wooden block on a string. He led me out of the room, down a narrow corridor, and into a smaller office. He reached up onto a shelf and took down two small vials.

'Which is which?'

'This is what we gave you,' he said, pointing to the vial on the left. I took the other vial and dropped it into my pocket; I felt as if I were pocketing Garth's mind, his sanity.

There was something huge creeping up behind me. It was a green, multilegged insect that ate dwarfs. I resisted the impulse to turn and look for it. I knew there would be many such things waiting for me in the void of time ahead, at least until the contents of the other vial could be analyzed and a way found to neutralize its effects. Or perhaps the creatures would go away by themselves. In any case, I decided I wanted company.

'Let's see how fast you can come up with two glasses of water.' I waved the gun at him. He was very fast.

I opened the vial in my hand and tapped a few crystals of the drug into each glass, then motioned for Mueller to pick them up. He didn't have to be told what to do next. We marched back to the closed room, and I waited while the cloudy water disappeared down the throats of the men. Then I left them alone-I shut off the lights and closed the door.

I found a phone and dialed Garth's precinct. Then I backed up against the wall and held my gun out in front of me. The nameless forms sharing the room with me stayed hidden. At last MacGregor's welcome voice came on the line.

'Listen to me closely,' I said, struggling to keep my voice steady. 'I can probably only get it straight once. Garth's insanity is a setup. I think he'll be all right if you do what I say. If you do a urinalysis and blood test soon enough, I think you'll still find traces of a very unusual drug in his system. I know you will in mine, and I can prove where it came from. In the meantime, send a car to pick me up. I'm at Zwayle Labs. I have a surprise package for you.'

MacGregor started to pump me for more information. I was in no shape to give it to him, and I cut him off. Boise was starting to scream. Soon, Mueller joined him.

'Please hurry,' I said softly, closing my eyes. 'I'm afraid.'

Country for Sale

I rolled over in the dark and swatted the button on the alarm clock. Nothing happened. The jangling continued, bouncing around inside my brain like marbles in a tin cup. The hands on the clock read 3:30. I picked up the telephone and the ringing finally stopped. I pulled the receiver down near the vicinity of my mouth and muttered something unintelligible.

'Mongo? Is that you, Mongo?'

I rummaged around inside my mind until I managed to match the voice to a seven-foot giant with a penchant for collecting sea shells. I hadn't seen Roscoe Blanchard in five years, not since I'd left the circus.

'Roscoe?'

'Yeah, it's Roscoe.' The voice was strained, nervous. 'Sorry if I woke you up. I know it's close to midnight.'

I looked at the clock again. It still read 3:30. 'Roscoe, I think you need a new watch.'

'Huh?'

'Where are you?'

'San Marino.'

'California?'

'No. San Marino.'

'I got that. But where's San Marino?'

There was a long pause at the other end of the line.

'San Marino's in San Marino,' Roscoe said at last.

I decided to leave the geography lesson for later. 'Roscoe, what's the matter?' I asked him.

'We've got trouble here and nobody knows what to do. I remembered Phil mentioning something about you being a private detective now. I got your number out of one of the books in the office.'

'Where's Phil?'

'He's disappeared.'

That woke me up. Phil was Phil Statler, owner of the Statler Brothers Circus, where I'd spent eight of the most miserable years of my life. But there aren't that many things you can do when you're a dwarf. If you end up a circus performer, there's no better man to work for than Phil Statler.

'How long has he been missing?'

'Four days. And there are some other funny things going on. Just yesterday-' It ended in a bloody gargle and the muffled sound of something very large and heavy falling.

'Roscoe! I was screaming at a dial tone; the line had been disconnected. I tasted blood and realized I had bitten into my lower lip. I lay frozen, my fingers locked around the receiver.

I sat up on the edge of the bed and leaned forward to stop my knees from shaking. Somewhere at the opposite end of thousands of miles of wire a man was dead or dying, and all I had was the name of a place I'd never heard of. I dialed the operator.

It took ten minutes to confirm that the call had come from a place called San Marino, and another ten to find out where it was: San Marino, a full-fledged United Nations member, was a country which occupied the whole of a mountain top-Mount Titano-in Italy. That was all the information I was going to get; I couldn't get through to a police station, or anyone else for that matter, because the San Marinese phone system had suddenly broken down and the phone people couldn't tell me when it would be operational again. I would just have to live with the sound of Roscoe's dying.

I brushed my teeth and packed a bag.

* * *

I met an Italian on the flight to Venice who filled me in on San Marino.

San Marino seemed to be doing quite well despite the fact that I'd never heard of it. It was-well, a dwarf, the smallest and oldest republic in the world, sixty square kilometers with 19,000 people, about enough to fill the football stadium in a small college town. It had been around since a.d. 300, when a Christian stonecutter by the name of Marino hid out on Mount Titano to avoid being fed to the Roman lions.

San Marino's geography consisted of nine towns and three castles, which a Hollywood movie company had helped renovate in the '40s. Its economic assets included heavy doses of authentic medieval atmosphere, huge bottles of cheap cognac, postage stamps, and a thriving tourist trade.

It seemed a strange place to take a circus.

I landed in Venice and rented a car. The drive to the coast town of Rimini took a little over an hour. By then it