Slave of Sarma

Chapter Three

Richard Blade had never been cut out for the role of rejected suitor. Massive, handsome, steel thewed, endowed with a superior brain that matched his superb body, he was a man moulded for heroic things. Yet here he was, lurking in a dark areaway on a day of pouring rain, watching another man marry the girl he had loved and bedded. Any moment now she would come out of the little church across this quiet Mayfair street, borne on the triumphant arm of Reginald Smythe-Evans, CPA.

Blade made a bear-like sound in his throat. Reginald Smythe-Evans, indeed! Reggie! Blade spat and pulled the collar of his trenchcoat tighter against the rain. It was almost obscenely like something out of P.G. Wodehouse. Reggie was pale, thin, and had spots. And a great deal of money, because Reggie, Sr. owned the firm.

Yet none of that explained it - Blade knew what did. Zoe Cornwall wanted a man around the house. Operative word - around. A man who would be there when wanted, whether for love-making or fixing things. A man who would not be forced to lie to her, by silence or omission, because the Official Secrets Act had him trussed like a Christmas goose.

Blade sighed and forgot it. That was over and done with. Zoe was out of his life and he wished her well with Reggie. There was a job to be done now, duty to be fulfilled, and the wedding of Zoe and Reggie had - how she would have hated the idea - set the stage.

If matters went well today, if the trap worked, they would take the fake Richard Blade.

The three of them, J, Lord Leighton, and Blade, had devised the plan during an arduous eighteen hour session at the house in Prince's Gate.

Blade, peering through gray ropes of rain at the blank gothic arching of church doors, smiled as he recalled how J had made him recount certain details of his three previous adventures into Dimension X. J was not a man easily satisfied. For a long time Blade had answered questions about the land of Alb, about his adventures among the Caths and Mongs in the Jade Mountains, the perils he had faced in the weird twilight world of Tharn, the strangest of all the X Dimensions into which the computer had sent him.

It was Blade's private opinion that J overdid things at times. His Lordship must have been of the same opinion and, being His Lordship, did not have to remain quiet about it.

"Don't be such a ruddy ass," he told J. "Who in the bloody hell else could it be? Let us have less 'security,' J, and more creative thinking. How are we going to trap this fake Richard Blade?"

J, sulking a bit, retired with his newly repaired pipe to a chair before the fire. Blade and the old scientist talked and, half-heartedly, tried to come up with something. Neither tried very hard. Both knew that in the end it would be J who solved the problem.

And so it was. An hour or so later J had it all worked out. The wedding, the next day, was fortuitous. What more natural than that a rejected suitor, a little the worse for wear, needing a shave and with whiskey in him, should hover in the shadows and watch his lost love?

Lord L rubbed his hands in half-contemptuous glee. "Pure Stella Dallas. But it might work."

Now Blade glanced at his watch. A quarter after four.. There was music in the church and massed shadow play behind the vaulting stained glass. One of the great double doors swung open. Any moment now the bride and groom would be descending the rain shiny steps to the waiting limousine. Blade took a step upward from his dark railed area-way so he could look up and down the street.

The driver of the rented bridal limousine was J's man. So was the helmeted, rain caped "Bobby" making his slow patrol near the church steps. One of J's cars half blocked the end of the narrow street. The far end was a cul de sac.

J himself was one of the guests. He was in the church now. When the throng began to bubble out of the church, tossing rice and old shoes and generally effusing, J would have to bubble and effuse with them. Blade wondered how J had wangled his invitation.

A taxi came down the street at the same moment the crowd spilled from the church. Blade stepped down into the area again and peered through the spiked iron grille. This was the essence of J's plan. A third Richard Blade! J was offering them a decoy and hoping they would bite.

The taxi halted just short of the church. The crowd, perhaps sixty-odd men and women, surged down the steps, broke around the tall figure of J's Bobby and formed two roughly equal groups flanking the lane down which would come the happy couple.

Blade watched the taxi.

The man who got out and paid the driver, refused his change, and stared in a sullen, hurt manner at the church doors, was an excellent actor. J's makeup people had labored for hours. The result, the real Blade admitted now, was astounding. For a short time, in bad light, the man could pass for Richard Blade. Now he stood, swaying a little, scowling, hands in pockets, waiting for a last look at the girl he had lost. The actor had been coached by J in person.

J came out of the church, moving a bit out from the crowd and remaining at the top of the steps. He was carrying a bouquet and a large paper sack of rice. Blade grinned. J was a thorough man.

J did not expect the Russians to make an attempt at snatching Blade on the church site, or even near it. What J did expect was that the Russians - provided they showed up at all - would pick up the actor - Blade and tail him away from the wedding after he had run through the histrionics of a half-drunken sore loser. That was the script: the Russians would tail the actor - Blade and J's men would tail the Russians. At the proper time J and his men would pounce. And, since the Russian Blade had not put in an appearance - neither Blade nor J had really thought he would - the captured agents would be taken to a certain old house in Hampstead Heath and, in J's parlance, 'questioned a bit.' When J's men questioned you, you usually talked.

It did not work out that way. Not at all.

The florist truck came down the street and passed the church. Traveling slowly, it went on up the street, reversed in a drive, and came back down the street. As it neared the church and the little crowd it slowed to a bare crawl. Blade, concealed in the area-way, watched the truck with a little tic of unease. Still - what more natural than a florist truck, late because of weather and traffic, delivering flowers to a church? J's men guarding the end of the street had no orders to keep anyone out. This was supposed to be a trap - you had to let the quarry in.

A riffle of sound arose from the crowd, a melange of shouts and laughter and old jokes and flung rice and shoes. The happy couple were coming down the church steps arm in arm.

It was a tribute to Blade's professionalism that he took one look at Zoe's face, remembered her body for a last time, and then kept his eyes on the actor - Blade. That talented gentleman, under orders to make a discreet scene and call attention to himself, was trying to push through the throng and get to the newlyweds. He was having rough going. The crowd was small, but tightly knit, and it took the actor a couple of minutes to make it through the last clot of friends and well-wishers. Then, of course, the ham in the actor came out. He faced Zoe and Reggie, the latter taking a fast backward step, and, swaying drunkenly, made a wild gesture and said something. Blade was caught between laughter and pity for Zoe. She really didn't deserve this. It was just bad luck that she and Reggie, and their wedding, had to be caught up in J's machinations with the Kremlin.

Zoe thought it was the real Blade. A drunken, demented Richard Blade. She clung to Reggie as the actor pointed an accusing finger and declaimed something. The babble of the crowd died as they sensed something unusual. Reggie, by neat footwork, managed to remain behind his bride.

Richard Blade, fascinated as he was by the absurd little tableau, was still to blame. He should have been more alert than he was. But Blade was man, not superman, and at the moment he was empathic with poor Zoe. His gorge rose and yet he was near laughter as she in turn pointed a finger at the man she thought was Blade and began to tell him off.

Blade wrote his own dialog for the scene: "Have you gone mad, Richard? This is not like you. Not at all like you! And drunk in the bargain! Oh, Richard, Richard, how could you come here like this and - "

The florist truck nosed to a stop behind the wedding limousine. The back doors flew open and four burly men leaped out. They carried coshes and brass knuckles and used them expertly as they smashed a path through the little crowd.

All of J's plans were knocked into a cocked hat. The Russians, eschewing subtlety, were going after Blade in the most direct manner. Knock down and drag out!

The real Blade had his orders. Stay out of it. J had not even wanted him along. He clutched the area railing, fretting, wanting to get into it and smash about a bit.

J, seeing his plans go wrong, put a silver whistle to his lips and shrilled a warning. The Bobby leaped into the melee. The driver of the limousine came running around his car brandishing a blackjack. J's car at the end of the block spun its wheels, burning rubber, and came tearing down to the church. Women screamed and men cursed.

The four men got to the actor - Blade, smashed him over the head with a cosh and began dragging him down the steps toward the florist truck. J, his whistle trilling all the while, fought to get down through the mob. The Bobby grappled with the men and was knocked aside, went down, was kicked. The limousine driver dove into the fracas, brought one of the toughs down in a superb tackle. The two men wrestled about in the gutter. J's car screeched to a gut-chilling halt, tires smoking, skidding in to block off the florist truck, and four of J's men spilled out eager for combat.

That, the real Blade thought with regret, should do it. The odds were with J's people now. Too bad. He had been looking for an excuse to get into it.

Just too late he heard the oily snuck of a door opening behind him. A door he had tried when he had first taken up his position in the areaway and found locked.

There were four or five of them, he was never sure, and they were silent and swift and sure. Blade spun his elbow in a face, kicked one man in the knee, got in a flurry of straight punches. He tried to yell and a leather sleeved arm choked off the sound. Something smashed behind his ear and he went to his knees, still fighting, smashing at the first crotch available and hearing a yelp of pain. Lightning skewered his skull as he fought to get to his feet. They were sapping the hell out of him - one - two - one - two -

Someone said: "Not too hard! Don't kill him!"

They stabbed him. He felt the sting of the long needle as it jammed cruelly through trenchcoat, jacket, shirt and into his hard muscled shoulder. Blade cursed and struck out again, feeling the strength flow out of him, seeing the wet trash strewn concrete of the area-way floor come up to meet him as his knees buckled and he went off the high board into deep, deep darkness.