A Kentucky Colonel in King Arthur’S Court and the Swamp Maiden of Venus

© 2009 Kenneth Tucker. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 4/15/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4259-4288-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4259-4383-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-0954-2 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2006906006

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents

A Kentucky Colonel in

King Arthur’s Court

Chapter One

Off Into the Wild Blue Where?

Chapter Two

Who’s Afraid of the

Big Bad Wolfmen?

Chapter Three

No Stone Unturned

Chapter Four

On the Rocky Road to Caerleon

Chapter Five

An Evening to Remember

Chapter Six

Off —Minus a Yellow Brick Road!

Chapter Seven

No Place that the Triple A

Would Ever Recommend

Chapter Eight

In the Hall of the Mountain King’s Daughter

Chapter Nine

The Maltese Morgan

Chapter Ten

Into the Enchanted Forest

Chapter Eleven

The Demon of the Forest

Chapter Twelve

A Black Night and a Black Knight

Chapter Thirteen

Don’t Carry Me Back

to Old Virginny

Afterword and a Foreword

The Swamp Maiden of Venus

Acknowledgments

About the Author

For Lowell Sharpenstein,

who was there when the storytelling began.

A Kentucky Colonel in

King Arthur’s Court

It seemed to begin that long, bleak day when the young man was riding homeward to Hampstead. He chose to sit on the outside of the mail coach, but neglected to wear his greatcoat. The icy air wrapped about him like a giant’s glove and crushed his resistance like a weed. But, of course, it had begun earlier when he had nursed his ailing brother Tom as the latter’s face had lost the colors of youth and waxed cadaverous. Yes, the young man was well acquainted with death. He had studied medicine. He arrived at Wentworth Place, where he was staying with friends; he stumbled into his room, his head reeling slightly, his body feverish, the young man of poetry whose imagination gamboled amid airy castles, splendid grottos, darksome forests, and radiant maidens in verdant fields, the young man whose soul throbbed at the very thought of her whom he addressed under many titles of ardor but whom perhaps he addressed most tenderly—as he often did—as my dear girl. As he climbed into bed, a friend heard him cough, and a speck of blood appeared on the bedclothes. Later, the friend would write, I went towards him; he was examining a single drop of blood upon the sheet. ‘Bring me the candle, Brown; and let me see this blood.’ After regarding it steadfastly, he looked up in my face, with a calmness of countenance that I can never forget, and said,—I know the colour of that blood; —it is arterial blood;—I cannot be deceived in that colour;—that drop of blood is my death-warrant;—I must die.’

Chapter One

Off Into the Wild Blue Where?

"But ah! I am no knight whose foeman dies;

No cuirass glistens on my bosom’s swell;…."

Keats, To——

A gusty March twilight. From an open window somewhere, the strains of Glenn Miller’s Sunrise Serenade wafting through the neighborhood of three-and four-story red brick houses. One grimy-faced boy swinging lazily back and forth in an inner tube suspended from a thickly branched poplar; several girls watching another skip through the hopscotch squares chalked on the pavement before a neighborhood grocery. An elderly lady walking a fox terrier. Two men pausing before a small Catholic church to give Benito Mussolini a verbal tar-and-feathering. And a sight most uncommon for the rather nondescript neighborhood: a spotless black Cadillac turning a corner onto the avenue and purring softly down it, past the playing girls and then past the Catholic church, to stop before the cluttered porch of an apartment building that had once been the residence of one of the river city’s more affluent families.

The limousine was not the sole cause of turning eyes. Its occupants were equally incongruous with the neighborhood. On either side of the front seat were men in top hats. Almost simultaneously, they opened their respective doors and stepped out to reveal that they were similarly dressed. Both wore patent leather shoes, evening dress, and charcoal-colored overcoats.

Only their heights and faces distinguished them. The one who had been driving was roughly six feet tall, block-shouldered—he could have been mistaken for a boxer! His face was round, and not unpleasant. Although the mouth possessed a slightly brutal twist, it was frequently offset by a cordial smile, and minimized by warm hazel eyes.

His fellow was nearly five inches shorter. His slightly egg-shaped face was dominated by a pencil-thin black mustache, beginning beneath each nostril and streaking down to each corner of his mouth. He could have been mistaken for a comic strip’s conception of a bon vivant Frenchman.

Both quickly stepped back to open the back doors. In the middle of the rear seat glimmered the bobbed hair of a blonde woman. The limousine’s remaining occupant looked slowly back and forth twice at each of her companions. But no true indecision reigned in her eyes. As a sly smile grew, she edged over to the right and stepped out, revealing her white evening gown and silver fox stole as she extended her hand to the gentleman with the pencil-thin mustache.

But she turned around and called over the hood of the car to the tall, block-shouldered man, who was bending to grasp something which had been on the front seat between him and his fellow. Sorry, Hal, but I decided to grace Wolfy with my favor. After all, he did do me the courtesy of agreeing at the last possible moment to be my escort to the spring ball, the very occasion at which for sixth months my poor idealistic father has been planning to announce our engagement!

Touché, responded Hal, and reached into the interior of the car.

She continued. Think what a disaster it would have been—I swear an absolute first for the society column—for a girl to show up at her engagement party with a substitute fiancé!

Hal moved his moose-like shoulders outside the car, the sought-after object still on the front seat. How many times must I say I’m sorry? I told you my watch just stopped on me. Time just slipped away....

And none of us knew where under God’s bright sun you were! Except that I was nearly certain you were dawdling away the afternoon at the museum or the library or some other place equally as interesting to me as a dishrag!

Listen, said Wolfy, if my presence is causing difficulties, I can call a taxi.... A suppressed liveliness in his eyes, however, belied the depth of his tone’s sincerity.

Nothing doing, Wolfy, she responded. You were thoughtful enough to offer your services, so you are going with us to the ball. I’m not embarrassed by having two escorts. The only one who should be embarrassed is Mr. Hal Morgan. I swear, Hal, if anyone raises an eyebrow, I’ll tell them the reason Wolfy is along and whose fault the entire imbroglio is.

Then let’s pin a medal on Wolfy, said Hal under his breath, but not with his words so submerged that they could have drowned.

She smiled as though she had just scored a point in a fencing match.

Statuesque, softly attractive, chicly and expensively dressed, the young woman easily drew eyes. In fact, several times Hal had fantasized that she could have been a marble Athena metamorphosed into vibrant, bronze-fleshed life. Her rings and the soft tan fingers that bore them would have informed an experienced eye that her hands had no knowledge of wringing out mops or molding hamburgers from raw beef to be slapped down on a diner’s grease-coated grill. Indeed, her demeanor and appearance suggested that she did not habitually fulfill requests. Introductions, nevertheless, invariably caused her fleeting embarrassment: She bore the unfortunate name of Brünnhilde Clacker.

The verbal fencing match apparently over, Hal Morgan resumed reaching into the car’s interior and extracted a burlap sack.

You’re not going to bring that godforsaken thing to the ball, I hope! cried Brünnhilde. I hope it doesn’t contain issues of the silly magazine Weird Stories.

The title is Weird Tales. And no copies are in the bag, which contains my purchases of this afternoon, and, of course, I’m not going to bring it to the ball, Hal replied, then shut the car door. I just thought I’d carry it along to while away my time while you did your dabblings in the occult.

Anger flashed in Brünnhilde’s green eyes. Dabblings! Don’t make fun of me, Hal!

Sorry, he replied. I’m simply guilty of an ill-chosen word.

As he joined them on the sidewalk, she regained a visible degree of composure, but her tone was still tartly defensive. I told you the purpose of this side trip is not something foolish, something idiotic, as you’d like to suppose. It’s to get a fertility potion for me to take at twelve tonight, the night of the announcement of our engagement, so that five years hence, after we’ve lived in Paris, sailed down the Rhine, taken pictures of the Parthenon, and seen the pyramids, I can conceive a healthy boy child who will one day take over the family business!

Hal Morgan stifled the urge to reply, and glanced down into the burlap sack.

Wolfy—whose first name was Leonard and whose last was Wolfson—withdrew a holder containing a freshly lighted thick Egyptian cigarette from his lips, exhaled a wisp of smoke, then said, If you’re going to marry Hal, Brünnhilde, you’re going to have to become used to his playful eccentricities. After all, some men will be boys and must have their toys.

Momentarily, Hal relished the fantasy of leaving the imprint of his right hand’s knuckles on Wolfy Wolfson’s fresh-shaven left jaw, but the realization that once upon a time his smug adversary had been Mrs. Wolfson’s bouncing bundle of joy, among other considerations, caused Hal to jam his incipient fist into a deep pocket of his overcoat. No sense lay in causing the old lady to suffer a conniption fit or in making a fool of himself in front of Brünnhilde or in reserving an overnight room for himself in the county jail by in fact donating such an imprint to Wolfy’s features.

Hal smiled in a vain effort to block Wolfy’s verbal blow that had already fallen.

Come on, let’s hasten, said Brünnhilde. It’s forty-five minutes until the ball begins. I’ve resigned myself to being at least a few moments late for my own engagement festivity, but I’d hate to walk in as the last waltz was being played.

Hal dickered with the possibility of reminding her that she could still arrive on time if she would forget about the foolish fertility potion and her cousin Monte’s ridiculous dabblings in the occult. But such a remark would be valueless: Determination was Brünnhilde’s second name, and when her mind was made up, alas, for the poor soul who would endeavor to change it.

Brünnhilde cast her vision about. Oh, there’s Monte’s apartment! she chirped, pointing.

Hal had been with her to visit her sorcerer manqué cousin only once before and did not recall in which building Monte had his apartment, but Hal’s gaze followed Brünnhilde’s well-manicured finger to a three-story red brick dwelling two doors before them.

As they walked wordlessly toward it, Hal reflected that he was perhaps being too harsh with his fiancée. When all was said and done, she wasn’t a bad sort, really. She promoted charities, the Red Cross in particular, owned an infectious sense of humor, became delightfully animated in conversations, and, at festivities, seemed genuinely concerned that those about her were having a good time.

Still, however, existed her proclivity for going off on extravagant tangents, particularly those concerning the occult. Currently she was feasting on the conviction that in previous lives she had been both Joan of Arc and Helen of Troy!

They turned from the sidewalk upon a narrow walkway of grass-fringed bricks leading to a wide littered porch of time-scarred concrete, and mounted the steps. As Hal hastened to open the rusty screen door and stood aside so that the others could enter, he noticed on the strip of brown wrapping tape affixed to the nearest of three rust-speckled black mailboxes, the words, Monte Alpine, Esq. Fortunes Told, Evil Eye Warded Off, Nostradamus Interpreted! Hal inwardly struggled with the impulse to shake his head in mock despair and lost—even though neither of his companions was paying attention to him.

As their heels began clattering up the narrow steps to Monte’s third-floor apartment, Hal reflected, as he had done countless times since he had reached adulthood, that indeed Brünnhilde might be the right sort of wife for a certain kind of man, but unfortunately not for him! But what could he do about the impending marriage? The church had been reserved a year in advance, the minister lined up, the extravagant caterer hired, and the invitations already printed and addressed in Brünnhilde’s own neat and firm script (—all thanks to Brünnhilde’s ability to become wholeheartedly absorbed by whatever project currently prepossessed her.) Hal’s backing out would be one of the unkindest cuts he could give, and should he take that step—heaven forbid that he would consider it seriously!—what then would he do with his own life?

As they rounded the landing separating the first and second stories, Hal wondered what kind of husband Wolfy might make for Brünnhilde. The three had known each other since those now largely forgotten days at Mrs. Emmett’s preparatory school, which had separated the boys and girls into different wings. As an eight-year-old, Wolfy had boasted that Brünnhilde was his girlfriend. Later, in high school, he had even dated her off and on for a year and a half. Hal’s impression had been that Wolfy would have bought her a blinding diamond even then, but Brünnhilde, ever loyal to her family’s regimen, had managed, while being flagrantly coquettish at times, to keep Wolfy at a most inconvenient (for her) arm’s length.

As they approached the landing before the nondescript door to Monte’s apartment, Hal reflected that during the past three months, Wolfy’s long-dormant fascination with Brünnhilde Clacker had become strikingly non-dormant, especially since Wolfy’s grandfather had used the family purse strings to curtail the younger Wolfson’s involvement with what was euphemistically termed an exotic dancer at the Gayety Burlesque Theatre, a former chorine celebrated as Lolly Paloozza. After this imbroglio, Wolfy’s affections had bounced back to Brünnhilde. Hence, the task force of snubs, criticisms, humiliating quips, and sneers Wolfy had been marshaling against Hal. True, the two had never been friends. Wolfy had, in fact, taken verbal swipes at him since grade school, but recently, they had become irritatingly frequent, as if Wolfy, although having abandoned hope of breaking up Brünnhilde’s engagement, had decided that at least Hal would pay for being the man of her family’s dreams.

Wolfy’s knocking upon the door interrupted Hal’s uncomfortable reverie.

Perhaps thirty seconds of silence ensued. But as Wolfy raised his hand to knock again, they heard the slow shuffle of Monte’s trademark rat-eaten bedroom slippers trekking from somewhere in the depths of the apartment toward the door. Some seconds later, Monte was embracing his cousin. As the pair broke apart, Hal reflected that Monte Alpine might well have not changed his garments since their last visit. In fact, Monte called to Hal’s mind the fantastic imagining of someone sucked into a gigantic vacuum cleaner, then suddenly expelled by the irked machine. Monte didn’t have the appearance of a toothsome morsel to assuage such a mechanical monster’s appetite.

As usual Monte wore nearly shapeless wool trousers, spotted with remnants of the morning’s breakfast, the previous night’s supper or possibly even last week’s bowl of vegetable soup. His suspenders pushed his abdominal bulk upwards to create a makeshift volleyball of flesh, one not able to accommodate his rumpled cotton shirt—its right front tail had managed to escape from the ineffective belt and dangled haplessly before him. Unkempt fox-colored hair surmounted his globular face, whose most prominent features were wire-rimmed glasses and an inch-long hair sprouting from a dime-sized wart just below his left nostril.

After motioning them in, Monte enthusiastically shook hands with Hal, and as he turned to greet Wolfy, a cursory glance about the apartment’s living room told Hal that the premises would still qualify as a prime candidate for being labeled a fire hazard: Clutter, clutter everywhere, Hal momentarily thought, parodying Coleridge’s famous line. Shelves containing bottles and canisters of chemicals and ingredients for cauldrons lined two walls. Statues of Aztec, Himalayan, and Grecian deities, images made of straw, and voodoo masks, as well as piles of dusty books, tomes of decaying leather, and stacks of newspapers and magazines, some dating back to 1901, had confiscated almost every inch of the living room’s remaining available space. Only a threadbare sofa along the wall before Hal and leading back to the kitchen and bedroom was relatively free of clutter. (In fact, it and a floor lamp at its right and a clothes tree by the door were the only semblances of the ordinary domesticity one associated with a living room.) Beside the pathway leading before Hal to the apartment’s rear, another one went to the left and terminated before a table of retorts, flasks, test tubes, chemical containers, and a purplish liquid in a beaker being heated by a Bunsen burner.

Hal reflected that Monte, had he chosen to enter the management staff of Brünnhilde’s father’s fortune-flowering firm, could have been living in a mansion along Cherokee Road or in a prime downtown apartment. But Monte, ever the dreamer, had long ago chosen to follow his own haphazard path that he hoped would lead to occult wonders.

Hal’s vagrant attention was recalled to the room by Monte’s remarking, Goodness gracious, Brünny, I would certainly like to come to the ball to hear the announced marriage, but not on this night of all nights!

Hal noted inwardly that Brünnhilde most likely had nourished no hope of Monte’s joining them; she had simply repeated an earlier invitation for the sake of politeness. Monte’s donning a tux and attending an exclusive shindig at the Madrid Ballroom was about as unthinkable as white rabbits popping out of the top hat Hal was holding.

I’m sure I have the formula correct this time for my special project. Tonight, after you leave and when it is finished, I’ll sip my brew, recline on the sofa, and let my consciousness travel to the astral world. I so look forward to shaking Lincoln’s hand and pointing out to Nostradamus the errors he made. Monte nodded toward the liquid not yet simmering in the beaker.

Hal did a double take. He had assumed that Monte had given up trying to brew a potion that would lubricate his consciousness for astral travel; according to Brünnhilde, the last potion he had decocted had stricken him with three days of excruciating diarrhea!

Oh me, continued Monte, I often fear I’ll always be the sorcerer’s apprentice, and never the sorcerer himself. To be truthful, I have had countless failures, but I feel it in my bones. Tonight I’ll visit the astral world.

But the fertility potion—? said Brünnhilde.

Oh, don’t worry your attractive little head one iota about that! I’ve prepared three of them before, and I had no trouble concocting yours this afternoon.

But did any of the fool things work? remarked Hal within the refuge of his own skull.

The phial’s in the refrigerator! It needs to be chilled for four hours after being distilled! Monte continued. I just need to add a pinch of ragweed, a few mouse hairs, give it a good shake or two, and it’ll be ready for your consumption at midnight. Come, would you all like to watch me mix in the final ingredients that will insure the birth of the future scion and heir to the fortunes of the Clacker and Morgan families!

A smirk flickered upon Wolfy’s features. Just think, perhaps Hal junior might one day end up our nation’s president!

Well, drawled Monte, one can never be definitive about the future, but with my potion taking its effect, I see no reason why a scion of the two families might not occupy the Oval Office.

At any rate, if all goes according to plan, our grandchild should be the biggest tycoon this old city has ever seen! said Brünnhilde.

Come, I’ll show it to you! But, wait, my astral world potion could boil anytime!

Then why don’t you turn off the Bunsen burner, and then heat up the super grog again as soon as we’re gone, said Wolfy.

Oh no, I, I couldn’t do that, as prudent as the step may seem. By allowing it to cool and then reheating it, well, the mixture could abort itself, turn out wrong, make a hash of the whole enterprise, and leave me sort of sitting on my hands.

Well, offered Hal, who had no desire to behold Monte add the finishing touches to the elixir, I could watch it for you!

Oh, fine, fine! That’s excellent! said Monte. Do watch it for me! I promise not to forget it. I’ll return well before it boils, but it’s a good idea for you to watch it anyway.

So, after placing his top hat on the clothes tree by the door, Hal made his way down the narrow corridor between the table and the piles of newspapers, magazines, and tomes lining the wall, and took an uncomfortable straight-backed chair before the burner and simmering liquid.

Hal remembered little from his high school chemistry class, but since the beaker was rather large, he assumed that at least five minutes would pass before its contents boiled.

Finding little fascination in watching beginning bubbles dart to the surface in a heated beaker, Hal opened the burlap sack between his legs and noted its contents, the fruits of what he was coming to think of as his last Saturday ramble.

For several years, it had become a tradition with him to take the trolley downtown once a month and lose himself in the afternoon. Almost always, he would spend a portion of it in the city’s gray stone library down at York Street. Often, he would read of long-ago kingdoms and civilizations, of the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. Or he would peruse medieval retellings of the world of King Arthur, such as Wolfram’s Parsifal or Chrétien’s romances translated by W.W. Comfort. Often, he would have a fine meal at the Seelbach Hotel. At times, he would stroll down to the river and watch barges of coal, sand, and stone being guided up or down the Ohio. He would also visit the pawn shops on Market Street and the nearby used book stores, thrilled by the prospect of the discoveries awaiting him upon the inviting shelves.

Letting his eyes rove over the acquisitions in the bag, Hal noted that he had overdone himself in purchases. He had acquired a Barlow hunting knife, a .38 snub-nosed police special along with three boxes of cartridges, a flashlight with fresh batteries, a Zippo lighter along with a container of fluid, and a pack of Zebra firecrackers (presumably left over from the Fourth of July), plus several party horns which, upon being blown, uncurled into paper snakes. The remainder of his treasures comprised a fountain pen, a deck of playing cards, and a package of envelopes. True, he already had two .38s and more than enough flashlights, but neither thirty-eight was a Colt, and one could not have too many flashlights on the premises, especially when one was gifted at misplacing them. On the literary side, he had acquired a copy of E. K. Chamber’s Arthur of Britain. Not a book necessary to his salvation, but certainly having the historical data of Arthur—as least as much of it as could be ascertained—close at hand would be valuable, in the event a passage in Malory provoked a historical question. Still, he had overindulged himself with purchases, but he was entitled to do so, since this day’s ramble would be his last Saturday adventure.

A wincing smile flitted upon his lips as he recollected what a bizarre story his and Brünnhilde’s lives would make. Hollywood might well be interested in making it into some kind of screwball comedy, perhaps starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, something like Bringing up Baby. After all how many young men and women, in modern America of 1939 of all places, for Pete’s sake, were reared to wed in order to found a dynasty? He did not have to scratch his head while searching for an answer. Outside Chicago, and perhaps Boston, he and Brünnhilde undoubtedly were the only ones!

The whole rigmarole had begun nearly thirty years before, when Henry Clacker the Fifth of Clacker’s Furniture Company, and Mark Anthony Morgan of Morgan’s Tool and Die Corporation—Brünnhilde’s and his grandfathers, bosom buddies, connoisseurs of scotch and prominent members of the Western Hills Country Club—had decided that since they were monarchs of two of the city’s wealthiest families, the families should intermarry and an industrial dynasty be founded. Since their own children were already wed, the two grand geezers had decided that the first two grandchildren born in each family would be married—provided, of course, that the sexes were appropriate.

Thus, from his earliest years, Hal Morgan had known that one day he would wed Brünnhilde Clacker. In fact, during grade school, he had had a crush on her; in high school, during his senior year, they had even dated, but decided to postpone any discussion of sending out wedding invitations until after college. After both had acquired their degrees, neither had felt compelled to rush to the altar. We’ve got almost as much time as we have money, Brünnhilde had said one fine spring evening, so let’s live a little and see the world before putting on the ball and chain. And Hal, believing more and more that he and Brünnhilde were not suited for each other, readily agreed.

Still, both families had considered them quasi-engaged. Hal, nevertheless, had more than played with the possibility of wedding someone else. No matter how he cut the cards, the result was always that he had little other matrimonial option than marrying the heir to the Clacker fortune. Brünnhilde, despite her virtues and because of her flaws, was not his dream girl. Who his dream girl might be, he had no idea, although a quixotic part of him kept looking for her. She would have to be someone slim, possibly blue-eyed. Hair color really didn’t matter, although he found redheads especially winsome. She would have to be eye-fetching, part nymph, part houri, but with a sense of humor, a dedication to fair play, interests at least partially in accord with his, but above all with a bedrock of common sense. No daffy Dora, by any means. Unlike Brünnhilde, she would not become rapturous upon convincing herself that she had contacted the spirit of Genghis Khan via a Ouija board.

He had thought that he had found his dream girl incarnated in Ruthie, but sadly, she had proved mentally unstable. Later, he had been certain he had found the doll of his dreams in Eve, the librarian. Although he had made his feelings known to her, she had decided to continue seeing the insurance salesman she had eventually married. Then there had been Lois and Sylvia. The fact was that for whatever reason—his being too intellectual, too individualistic, or too much a daydreamer—Hal Morgan had a remarkable strike-out record with women. He had spent several months brooding upon his burned-out romances when Brünnhilde, at age twenty-eight, deciding that her child-bearing years were numbered, had declared that it was time for them to begin trying on wedding finery.

Pausing in his lackluster reverie, Hal looked toward the beaker and discovered that its contents still were not boiling. Whether in the other room, Monte had added the special ingredients to the fertility mixture was uncertain. Brünnhilde was eagerly chattering away to her two victims about the possibly, according to her medium, that she had also been the Queen of Sheba.

Hal’s musings reclaimed his attention. In the past few months, he had decided that the time had come to end his days of being unleashed, fancy-free, and responsible only to himself. After all, when a fellow approached his thirties, his course in life ought to be set. Indeed, a nagging suspicion of his being childish was beginning to spoil the sauce of his being footloose, now that so many years had passed after his receiving his diploma. The rational course, then, for him was to marry Brünnhilde, settle down, and begin the dynasty that supposedly one day would dominate the city’s businesses. True, he would have to give up his sinecure as a nominal business consultant and take an active role in the firm. (A full, active partnership in the company was demanded as part of the agreement with his grandfather for passing on the family inheritance.) Yes, Hal supposed that he would be equal to the task, although he wasn’t looking forward to it. Although he had majored in business administration, his grade average in the discipline had been a C-. He would rather have majored in French, English, or possibly Latin. How lackluster seemed the world of proposing budgets, contemplating buy-outs, squabbling with boards of directors, making one’s bleary-eyed way through reports and staying up until the wee hours, pacing about because of the strategies of competitors! But he supposed that Achilles-like, he could don his armor and make himself master of the tasks, however lackluster they may be. Still, how strange it would be to find himself enclosed in an office scrawling—how did Bryant put it?—scrawling... No, the word wasn’t scrawling. Then a fragment of the sought-after quotation appeared: forced to drudge.../And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen?

How much better it would be if he could make a living by writing stories for Weird Tales like H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Belknap Long, Robert Bloch, and Robert Howard! Still he doubted that he had the talent, and his writing for the pulps would not win the approving smiles of either his grandfather or of Brünnhilde. How much better it would have been had he lived in the middle ages, when the tales of Arthur, Parsifal, Lancelot, and Gawain were fresh, pulsing with life, capable of being enlivened by the possibility of being true. Then perhaps he could have penned a romance or adventure that would have been all-absorbing.

Still in the kitchen, Brünnhilde was describing to the others the proposed wedding itinerary, which included Niagara Falls, the French Riviera, Brussels, and the Gobi Desert.

Yes, Hal, told himself that he was way past time in giving up his extended adolescence. Still, the decision had been made with reluctance. Although the wedding would be at least a year away, the engagement announcement, Hal felt, would sign the death warrant for his bachelor life. On Monday morning, he would have to report to his grandfather’s office and undergo the unappetizing process of being eased into management. Hours, even weekends, would be taken up with learning the minutiae of the tool and die business.

Thus, claiming one last Saturday afternoon for himself became a gilt-edged priority. He had set out upon his last afternoon of freedom and had enjoyed it so much that he had neglected to look at his watch until five o’clock. Hence the frantic rush homeward, the hasty shave and bath, and the apologetic call to Brünnhilde, all of which had provoked my lady’s wrath.

The sound of bubbling at his elbow turned his eyes. His jaw sagged. Within a tick, a substantial portion of the boiling purple liquid lurched over the beaker’s brim like a living being and splattered on the tabletop several inches from the edge.

Monte! Hal yelled, and tried to bolt upright from the chair, lest