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door open wide. For a moment he thought he had
elicited a response, if only a faint sound of movement within, but as he
stepped eagerly forward he saw that the room was empty. Of course, the old lab
equipment of Nicodaeus was long gone: the tables covered with alembics and
retorts, the shelves containing eye of newt and best mummy-dust, the
crackle-finish panels crowded with dials, indicator lights, and flickering
oscilloscope traces. Now it had the appearance of some ancient tomb, deep with
dust, festooned with cobwebs, eerie in the moonlight streaming through the
double doors which opened on the small balcony from which he had been forced
more than once to flee to safety.
     
                There was one more possibility, he reminded
himself, sternly rejecting hopelessness: the most important item of all—the
special telephone to Central, in the cabinet beside the door. He turned to it,
ready to utter a cry of relief, but instead he groaned. The door of the
compartment had been ripped from its hinges, and the interior was empty but for
a scattering of dust and a number of bits of waste paper. A stub of wire,
rudely hacked short, projected from the cabinet wall near one corner.
     
                Aha! This was more like the old O'Leary luck. He
could scrape the insulation away, cross the bare wires, and tap out an SOS.
Surely some on-the-ball operator at Central would get the message, trace it,
and—
     
                "Move not, on your life!" A harsh
voice called so close to O'Leary's ear that he uttered a yelp and started
violently. Hard hands grabbed his arms, half-supporting, half-restraining him.
He considered stamp-kicking the man behind him, but upon seeing the other man,
in front of him, he chose discretion.
     
     

Chapter Three
     
                Fists on hips, clad in a close-fitting outfit of
black trimmed with silver, a large businesslike handgun in his fist, stood a
man only half a head shorter than Lafayette's six-one, his face thrust forward
to bring its expression of hostility within an inch of O'Leary's own features.
It was the face from the dream.
     
                "Caught you red-handed, simpleton!"
the familiar voice barked. "Did you actually imagine you could commit
these outrages against the august peace and security of Reality Prime with
complete impunity? Saucy rogue, eh, Chief, thus to bait Belarius in his very
den?" The stranger's gaze went past O'Leary's shoulder to the man behind
him.
     
                "Did you say 'Belarius'?" Lafayette
croaked.
     
                "So, you recognize the name of the fabled
Scourge of Scoundrels, eh?" Suddenly Lafayette was spun from behind.
     
                "You're not Belarius," he blurted, nose-to-nose
with a stocky fellow, also in black-and-silver uniform and gun, his outfit also
trimmed with black-and-gold tracings at the wrist and collar.
     
                "You picked the wrong name, wise guy!"
O'Leary went on hotly. "I happen to know Belarius personally, even if he is a big shot; in fact, I was instrumental in getting him out of a serious
scrape once. He's a big fellow —six inches taller than you, at least, with
these really piercing blue eyes, blue like a cave of ice, and a beak on him
like an eagle; not that he's not a distinguished-looking old boy—and he's lots
older than you. Go on, kid me some more ..."
     
                "The description you offer is that of my
grandfather's grandfather, Belarius I," the self-styled Belarius said
coldly. "Is your remarkable longevity another trivial detail to be
dismissed with a wave of the hand?"
     
                "I'm not really three hundred and
thirty-one years old," Lafayette replied with dignity. "That is,
maybe I was born three hundred and thirty-one years ago, but I've only lived
thirty-one years."
     
                "So, having been cut down in your boyhood,
you rose from the grave after