Chapter Fifty-Six
As there was still no viable means of leaving the premises, the duel was arranged for the hotel’s theatre, bedecked as it still was with the remnants of an enchanted forest. Needless to say, every seat was taken.
Pluck had balked at the idea of a duel. He’d offered various reasons why it would be impossible, including that he was a gentleman and Mifkin, a servant. The guests and staff, itching as one for such a showdown, dismissed his gentlemanliness out of hand. Pluck contended that the suspect was using the distraction of a duel merely as a means of evading the justice his crime would ordinarily call down on him. To this, various medieval arguments of the righteousness of the victor deciding his victory were put in answer. Finally, Pluck tried to hide in a basket of laundry, but was discovered by Annette Godefroi and unceremoniously dumped onto the floor of the lobby in front of the amused guests.
In a small chamber backstage which was used as a dressing room, Pluck paced back and forth. Bartoff was with him.
“You will smash him!” Bartoff insisted. “And if you do not, I will step in and do it for you, my friend.”
“No, no, you mustn’t do that,” Pluck instructed him. “While nothing would be lovelier than the sight of you pulverising Mifkin’s smug face, it would shame me forever after. No. This is a daemon I must face, and I must face him alone.”
A soft knock on the door.
“Come in.”
It was Enid. She held a handkerchief to one of her eyes.
Bartoff squeezed his friend’s bicep, as if to say, “I know you’ll kick the shit out of that oaf,” and left the room.
Enid rushed to Pluck and embraced him. “Please don’t do this,” she begged him, softly, at his ear.
“Don’t do what?”
“The duel, you idiot. What do you think?!”
“I don’t know. I thought you meant, maybe, tie my shoes.”
“Were you tying your shoes when I said it?”
“Wasn’t I?”
“No. You weren’t.”
Pluck looked down at his shoes. He realised she was right.
“Huh. I must’ve only been thinking about doing so. But you’re right, I need to do it, before the duel.”
He knelt on one knee and tied his shoes.
“Please don’t do it!” she repeated.
“But they’re loose.”
“No: the duel.”
“Hang on—hang on, I can’t talk right now; I always get a little mixed-up when it comes to the part with tying the loops. Hang on.”
She waited, watching, while he tied the loops. Then, satisfied with his work, he stood once more, beheld her, and smiled with satisfaction at a job well done.
“Please,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Don’t do it.”
He laughed. “Too late, I’m afraid! Look!” He pointed to his shoes. “Snug and ready for action!”
“I’m not talking about your shoes.”
He looked at her in bewilderment. “You’re not?”
She shook her head.
He nodded, understanding. “Aha. . .you’re talking about the duel, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “I thought as much. And you don’t really care about my shoes, now do you? Admit it—it’s all right.”
“I don’t care about your shoes, Thaddeus. I just want you to be safe.”
“Well, I’ll have you know I want to be safe, too, and I don’t see how that would be possible if I go tripping about all over the stage while Mifkin’s taking shots at me!”
“Can we please stop talking about your shoes? Just for a moment.”
“Well. . .all right. I suppose.” He leant back and to the side and took a gander at her shoes: they were stark, black, worn, and in need of a good polish. The grace with which they were tied, on the other hand, was second to none. “I can’t see that there’s anything much to talk about on the subject of your shoes, though, so I can’t exactly see what all the fuss is about.”
A quick rap at the door, and Bartoff entered. “It’s time,” he said in a voice which was, for him, uncommonly low.
“Please, just a couple more minutes,” Enid begged of Bartoff.
“There’s nothing more to say about our shoes,” Pluck reassured her. “I think we’ve covered the topic exhaustively.”
“I don’t want to talk about shoes.”
Pluck looked at her strangely. “Then. . .why did you bring them up? In the first place?”
“I didn’t! Come on, Thaddeus, this might be the last time we ever speak!”
Pluck laughed, loudly, and looked at Bartoff. “Then why she’d want to spend the last time we ever speak speaking about shoes is beyond me!”
He started to move toward the door, but Enid held him by his waist. “Please! Please, don’t go—don’t leave me, like this!”
A trifle embarrassed at this scene of womanly infatuation in front of his exceedingly masculine friend, Pluck reached down, pulled off a shoe—with sublime agility, without unlacing—and placed it into Enid’s loving hands. “To remember me by,” he whispered in her ear, turned, and was gone.
Pluck and Bartoff came out on stage to a packed auditorium. While some of the glistening tree props remained, a plain black backdrop dominated the scene. On the other side was Mifkin, standing at attention, with his second, Curtis Vacaresteanu, who grinned snarlingly their way. In the centre of the stage stood a man Pluck barely recognised: a short Indian gentleman, in a white suit, with flashing eyes and an unusually straight mouth, tending to turn neither upwards nor down. This was Sri Aadi Gangakanta, who had been subject to cursory scrutiny in one of those many interviews which had been carried out but were too numerous and tedious to be recorded in this volume—you remember, I told you that before. A refreshingly tolerant inquisitor, Pluck had not held the man’s colour or creed against him, and, finding nothing particularly suspicious about the man’s behaviour, more or less cleared him. And now, though there was no shortage of applicants for the position, as no one else in the hotel could be found to possess the slightest claim to impartiality when it came to the inspector, Sri Gangakanta was elected to act as sole referee.
He summoned the combatants and their seconds to the centre of the stage. “Gentlemen—have you exhausted all means for a peaceful resolution to your disagreement?” He spoke in a soft, mild tone, as if to suggest that every man in the world was a brother of the next, and that all disputes could be chuckled away if only reason could be sought and rendered its due devotion.
“Monsieur Mifkin would settle for an apology and a handshake,” Curtis muttered. “He has no wish to harm the inspector.”
Sri Gangakanta looked to Bartoff. Bartoff looked to Pluck. Pluck nodded.
“Inspector Pluck will accept an apology, if suitably grovelling, from Mister Mifkin, if followed by a confession of murder and public display of nudity,” Bartoff explained.
“Don’t be an idiot!” snarled Mifkin. Sri Gangakanta sighed. Pluck was looking at the floor.
“What if both Monsieur Mifkin and Monsieur Pluck apologised to each other, for their respective hurts, and shook hands?” Sri Gangakanta asked of all.
Mifkin conferred with Curtis. Curtis nodded, and said: “That would be satisfactory.”
Bartoff looked to Pluck. Pluck shook his head, looking at the floor.
“Inspector Pluck’s honour would not allow it,” Bartoff answered. “He insists on a confession of murder. As to the nudity—Mifkin need not manually stimulate himself, unless he cares to.” He looked to Pluck for confirmation, and received it in the form of a curt nod. Bartoff resumed: “But we will require a serious degree of humiliation. Perhaps erotic intercourse with some inanimate object?”
The negotiation went on like this for some time, but the parties failed to reach agreement. It came down to Pluck’s insistence, via Bartoff, on Mifkin publicly fellating a boiled egg. Sri Gangakanta was saddened to have to produce the small briefcase and open it to disclose two pistols. Pluck grabbed a pistol first, weighed it, first in one hand and then in the other, and handed it to Mifkin. Curtis objected to this on Mifkin’s behalf, and further negotiations were carried out over this topic. Mifkin finally agreed to take whichever pistol Pluck did not want, at which Pluck objected, citing his opponent’s offer as clear evidence of chicanery. Eventually, a system was established whereby both weapons were placed under napkins and moved about behind the referee’s back, before Pluck was allowed to choose his. Pluck refused, at first, claiming to find a spot on one of the napkins. Another napkin was secured, and subjected to Pluck’s concentrated scrutiny—he held it under a lamp and inched it in folds between his fingers until he was satisfied—then he chose one of the identical pistols, and the two men were placed, back-to-back, pistols up, stage centre.
“Please ask Monsieur Mifkin to refrain from protruding his backside up against mine,” Pluck requested.
“I am not!” his opponent seethed.
“Oh? Then, if not your backside, which body part is it which is stiffened so saliently against me, hm?”
The audience, who had been initially in a heightened state of anticipation, was now a little bored at Pluck’s incessant interruptions of what had been billed as a most diverting drama.
“I shall count out the ten paces,” announced Sri Gangakanta.
“How many?” queried Pluck.
“Ten, as agreed.”
“Did you say ten?”
“Yes.”
“All right. I wasn’t consulted about any of this, but all right.”
“We spent twenty minutes discussing it,” Curtis objected.
“That’s a lie, and a damned one, but I have more important things to worry about just now, so I’ll let it pass,” Pluck muttered in supreme magnanimity.
“One!”
“What?”
“Wait, stop!” sighed Sri Gangakanta. “I was counting the paces.”
“Then whyever did you not start with ‘one’, my good man?”
“That’s what he did!” Mifkin snarled, over his shoulder.
“Well, that’s certainly not what I heard,” Pluck spluttered.
“What did you hear?” asked Curtis.
“Pardon?”
“What did you hear?” Curtis asked, a little louder.
“I heard him say ‘won’,” said Pluck.
“Yes, that’s indeed what I said,” Sri Gangakanta confirmed.
“Not ‘one’,” Pluck clarified, “‘won’—as in, ‘Pluck “won”, not lost, the duel. Mifkin lost. He was injured, frightfully.’”
“Can we just get on with it, please?!” demanded Mifkin.
Pluck shrugged. The men resumed their positions, and the counting recommenced.
“One!”
Pluck and Mifkin stepped one pace apart.
“Two!”
“Hang on!”
“Ugh!”
“Did you mean, ‘two’, as in, ‘number two, between one and three’, or ‘to’, as in, ‘to the pleasure garden shall we wend’, or ‘too’, as in, ‘I dare say she’s had a little too much to imbibe, what ho!’, or ‘too’, as in, ‘me too’, or ‘tu’, as in, French for ‘you’?”
“The first one,” Sri Gangakanta clarified.
“Which was the first one again?”
“Number two!” Mifkin shouted. “Damn you! It’s all numbers, if it’s counting! Isn’t that obvious?!”
They squabbled a bit more, then were persuaded to resume their positions, and the counting began again:
“One, as in, ‘number one’!”
The antagonists took a step.
“Two, as in, ‘number two’!”
Another step.
“Three, as in. . .‘three’!”
Another.
“Four, not as in, ‘for all time’, or as in, ‘the fore of the vessel’, but as in, ‘number four’!”
Pluck, nodding his head approvingly at the exactitude, advanced another step.
“Five! . . .Six, as in, ‘number six’, not as in, ‘the hunter sics his hound on the fox’, nor as in, ‘sex’! . . .Seven! . . .Eight, as in, ‘number eight’, not as in, ‘Patrick ate all of the tarts’!”
Pluck, chuckling at the image of some poor slob named Patrick wolfing down a tableful of tarts, stepped forward.
“Nine, not as in the German for the negative, but as in, ‘number nine’! . . .Ten!”
At “ten”, Pluck swung around, and demanded: “Wait, wait, have you elided the final ‘t’ in ‘tent’?”—but at that same instant, Mifkin, who had, obviously, also spun around, fired. Pluck collapsed to the floor. The crowd, although a fired shot and a casualty should hardly have been a surprise, given the nature of the entertainment, gasped and shouted.
“Is he dead?” “Is he dead?” “Is he finally dead?”, and other such remarks were called out. On stage, Enid was already on top of him, pushing a napkin against the hole in his arm and stroking his cheek, onto which her own tears splattered.
“Is this Heaven?” Pluck, staring up into the darkness of the ceiling, wondered. “It’s absolutely pathetic! If people really knew that this was where they were going to end up if they’re good, they’d stop trying altogether, and there’d be murder and mayhem in the streets!”