Read Online The World Shuffler by Keith Laumer - Free Book Online Page B

occasioned by the insect life that shared his accommodations, the mice that ran across his feet, the thick, fudgy odor, and the deep, glottal snores of the other inmates. He also tried, with less success, to keep his mind off the grisly event scheduled for the next morning.
    “Poor Swinehild,” he muttered to his knees. “She’ll think I ran off and deserted her. She’ll never trust another ladies’ room as long as she lives. Poor kid, alone in this miserable imitation of a medieval hell-town, with no money, no friends, no place to lay her head ...”
    “Hey, Lafe,” a familiar voice hissed from the murk behind him. “This way. We got about six minutes to make it back up to the postern gate before the night watchman makes his next round!”
    “Swinehild,” Lafayette mumbled, gaping at the tousled blond head poking through the rectangular aperture in the back wall of the cell. “Where did you—how—what—?”
    “Shh! You’ll wake up the screw!” Lafayette glanced across toward the guard. He sat slumped on his stool like a dreaming Buddha, his fingers interlaced across his paunch, his head resting comfortably against the wall.
    “I’ll hafta back out,” Swinehild said. “Come on; it’s a long crawl.” Her face disappeared. Lafayette tottered to his feet, started into the hole head first.
    It was a roughly mortared tunnel barely big enough to admit him. A cold draft blew through it.
    “Put the stone back,” Swinehild hissed.
    “How? With my feet?”
    “Well—let it go. Maybe nobody’ll notice it for a while in that light.”
    His face bumped hers in the darkness; her lips nibbled his cheek. She giggled.
    “If you don’t beat all, Lafe, grabbing a smooch at a time like this. Anybody else’d be thinking o’ nothing but putting distance between hisself and that basket party.”
    “How did you find out where I was?” Lafayette inquired, scrambling after her as she retreated.
    “The tapman told me they’d put the sneeze on you. I followed along to the gate and made friends with the boys there. One of ‘em let slip about this back way in. Seems like another feller escaped the same way, just a couple days back.”
    “They told you all that, on such short acquaintance?”
    “Well, look at it their way, Lafe: low pay, long hours—and what’s it to them if some poor sucker Rodolpho’s got it in for cheats the headsman?”
    “Well, that was certainly friendly of them.”
    “Yeah, but it was kinda tough on my back. Boy, them cold stone floors them boys has to stand on!”
    “Swinehild—you don’t mean—but never mind,” Lafayette hurried on. “I’d rather not have it confirmed.”
    “Careful, now,” Swinehild cautioned. “We go up a steep slant here and come out under a juniper bush. Just outside there’s a guy pounding a beat.”
    Using elbows, toes, and fingernails, Lafayette crept up the incline. A the top, he waited while Swinehild listened.
    “Here goes,” she said. There was a soft creak, and dim light filtered in, along with a wisp of fog. A moment later, they were across the alley and over a low wall into a small park. They picked their way among trees and shrubs to a secluded spot in the center of a dense clump of myrtle.
    “And I was worried about you,” Lafayette said, flopping down on the ground. “Swinehild, it’s a miracle; I still don’t believe it. If it weren’t for you, in another three hours I’d have been shorter by a head.”
    “And if it wasn’t for you, I’d still be playing ring-around-the-rosy with them five deck-apes, Lafe.” She snuggled close to him on the carpet of fragrant leaves.
    “Yes, but it was me that got you into the situation in the first place, dragging you off in the middle of the night—”
    “Yeah, but I was the one got you in bad with Hulk. He ain’t really such a bad guy, but he ain’t long on brains, always jumping to conclusions. Why, if he was to come along now, I bet the dummy’d try to make something of you and me here