The Unfair Fare Affair - Leslie Peter - Страница 21

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"Well, don't pass it prying into other folk's affairs," Kuryakin growled—and then, since it would probably be a good idea to put about some story accounting for the absence of Kurim Cernic, he added in less hectoring tones, "I was laid up with a dose of flu, if you must know. This damned climate gets me down; I wish the devil I could get away. Your beastly, dirty city air plays hell with the lungs of a man who's used to the fresh air of the country. Now, back in Slovakia, where I come from…"

He gave the same story to the proprietor of the kavarna. It was as well to answer questions before they were asked— and that remark of the shopkeeper's about being run over had come uncomfortably close to the truth! "Flu, was it?" the innkeeper said. "Takes it out of you, don't it? You look a bit peaky, I must say—you don't look yourself at all." And he scrutinized Illya's face with an intensity that made the agent quite uncomfortable.

Kuryakin had been told that Kurim Cernic had always used a particular corner of the kavarna, and he conscientiously carried his drinks over to this seat every evening. But however gruff and unapproachable he was, there was always one thing he could not guard against—the arrival of an intimate friend whom he might not know he should recognize; someone, perhaps, he might even be expected to hail! This was a hazard, however, that he would have to deal with when it arose. His first test in fact derived from a foe rather than a friend.

It was his second evening in the inn. He had stamped across to the bar to fetch his third Baracz. When he turned around with the shallow glass of apricot-colored liquor and started back to his seat, he saw that it had been taken in his absence.

A large mustached man with hands like hams was sitting nursing a pot of beer with a metal lid.

Judging from his baggy trousers and the peaked cap on his head, the fellow was some kind of workman. Illya had little doubt that he had taken the seat quite innocently and had no idea it had been occupied. But he realized from the giggles and covert winks being exchanged by the other customers that Cernic was expected to make something out of it.

A sudden silence fell in the bar as he walked heavily across to the corner, set his glass down on the scrubbed top of the table, and stood with his fists on his hips.

The man with the beer looked up and raised inquiring eyebrows.

"I think you're mistaken, friend," Illya said in an unfriendly voice. "That's my seat you're in."

"Your seat?" the big fellow said. "You bought the place maybe?"

"I was sitting there," Kuryakin growled. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Out."

"Well, I'm sitting there now," the man said shortly. He tugged a creased newspaper from his pocket, unfolded it, and began to read ostentatiously.

Scowling as ferociously as he could, Illya snatched the paper away and hurled it to the floor. "I said that's my seat. Get out of it!"

The big man half-rose threateningly. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he cried angrily. "I've a good mind to—"

He broke off as Kuryakin swept his tankard off the table with a crash. He drew a deep breath... and suddenly erupted into action in an attempt to throw the table over toward the Russian.

Kuryakin leaped in tigerishly and slammed it down on its legs again, pinning his adversary in the corner behind it. He was in some difficulty. The man was half a head taller than he was and strong besides. Cernic's reputation as a tough was almost certainly based on straight rough-housing and fist fighting. Yet Illya was not in fact particularly strong physically—and he could hardly risk making a show of the judo and karate of which he was master. In the split second that the big man was frozen against the wall by the table, he decided to try to cripple him with a single karate blow and then put in some fisticuffs afterward for the benefit of the gallery—and of his impersonation.

Seizing the man by the collar, he jerked him viciously face downward across the table top. Then, before his opponent could recover, he linked his hands and brought them hurtling down on the unprotected neck. The fight was in effect over then—the man's reflexes were paralyzed. But the window dressing had to be put in for the customers.

Kuryakin growled with simulated rage, cast aside the table, and thrust the fellow back up against the wall. Steadying him there with one hand, he drove three pile-driving blows to the pit of his stomach, allowed him to slide toward the floor, and finally helped him on his way with a couple of contemptuous rabbit punches. The man was out before he hit the ground.

Abruptly the place was loud with chatter again. The proprietor stood the table upright, dusted it down and replaced Illya's drink. A couple of the bar's patrons dragged away the unconscious man, and Kuryakin sat down, staring morosely into his glass.

The clientele were a rough bunch. Among them were the two drunks who had accosted him the night he arrived. And several times he saw the blonde girl who had been with them regarding him furtively. But the majority of them seemed to be the Czech equivalent of gangsters. There was not the opportunity for an organized underworld here that there would be in a Western city, but such crooks and black marketeers as there were, he would wager, hung around this quarter and this particular bar.

On the morning of the third day, Illya awoke and realized that he could no longer hear the rain on the roof. He threw the shutters wide and looked out on a different city.

The downpour had not long been over, but the sky was now an impeccable blue and the pale winter sunshine gleamed and sparkled from a million droplets of moisture dewing the chaos of slates and dormers and tiles and cornices and gutters outside the window. A crescent of the river glittered between the high blank wall of a warehouse and a forest of chimneys to his right, and above it the turrets of the fairy- tale palace on the high ground above the town shone in the bright light.

In the narrow, twisting streets of the quarter, shopkeepers and their customers had an air almost of gaiety about them, and several food stores displayed crates and baskets of fruit and vegetables on the sidewalk.

Kuryakin felt justified in taking Cernic to the kavarna at lunchtime and passed off the ribald references to this break with tradition with a snarl a little less surly than usual. The blonde wearing the open raincoat—her name, he had discovered, was Marinka—even gave him a half smile when he came in, and the proprietor was quite cordial.

"That's a bit better, isn't it?" he said cheerfully as he took Illya's order. "Makes the world a more cheerful place, I always say, when there's a bit of sun around, eh?"

"For those that have time to notice, I suppose," the Russian said grumpily. "As for me, I still wish I was a thousand miles away from it."

"Why, comrade? It's not such a bad city. At least there's life here!"

"Life? I'd give a great deal to get out of it. Right out, I mean—and I'm not kidding. Rain or shine, it makes no difference to me. All I want—"

"If you hate it so much, why don't you get out, then?" the proprietor interrupted reasonably. "There doesn't seem to be anything to keep you here; you don't seem to have a job or anything."

"You mind your own damned business!" Kuryakin shouted, thumping the table. "It's none of your business why I stay here. What I do is my own affair and I don't want any interfering snoopers meddling."

He drained his glass and stalked out, leaving the inn keeper staring in amazement. Anyone at that bar who didn't suspect by now that "Milo" was a crook on the run, the agent thought to himself with a grim smile, must be pretty dumb!

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