Nightside 10 - The Good the Bad and the Uncanny

concentrating on his meal. It was a curry, steaming hot, and the smell of it made my stomach rumble. Dash was a whip-thin figure in a smart blue blazer and white slacks. Bald-headed, his face was dominated by an eagle nose and bushy white eyebrows. He had to be in his eighties, but his cold blue eyes were still sharp and piercing. He sat bolt upright in his chair, and his blue-veined, liver-spotted hands didn’t tremble once as he shovelled food into his mouth.
    Shirley gave her husband a look that was half-exasperated and half-amused. “Don’t mind him, Mr. Taylor. He hates being interrupted at his dinner. He’s always believed conversation should follow food, not interrupt it. Won’t change your ways for anyone, will you, darling?”
    Dash grunted again, and she laughed quietly. Shirley den Adel was a well-preserved woman in her seventies, with a faint European accent I couldn’t quite place. Her gaze and her voice were both quite firm, and her easy manner did nothing to hide a sense of accustomed power and authority.
    “Good to meet you at last, Mr. Taylor,” she said, with what sounded very like genuine warmth. “Tommy always spoke very well of you.”
    “Tommy didn’t know his ass from his elbow,” said Dash, his voice still dominated by a sharp Chicago twang. He pushed back his empty plate and fixed me with a hard stare. “He should never have been a private eye. It’s not for everyone.” He glared at Walker. “And stay clear of that one. He’s bad news.”
    “You wound me, Dash,” murmured Walker. “After all, it was your son Hadleigh who taught me everything I know. Before he ... stepped down.”
    “Before he went crazy and ran off to the Deep School,” growled Dash. “The job broke him like it breaks everyone.”
    “He left to save his soul,” Shirley said firmly.
    “Or what was left of it,” said Dash.
    “The job’s not for everyone,” said Walker. “It’s always suited me just fine.”
    He looked at them both challengingly, and they looked away rather than meet his gaze. Walker glanced at me, to make sure I’d seen them defer to his authority.
    “So,” Walker said easily. “What are you doing these days, Dash?”
    Dash growled at him, apparently deeply immersed in the dessert menu, so Shirley answered for him. I got the feeling that happened a lot.
    “Dash is retired now. We both are. He gardens, and I work on our memoirs. Oh, the stories we have to tell! Not to be published until we’re both safely dead, of course. It’s not everyone who were legendary heroes back in the thirties and forties, then made an even more successful comeback in the seventies and eighties! We could have gone on ... but we both felt we’d done our best. So now we just consult, on occasion, and let younger bodies do all the hard lifting. Isn’t that right, Dash?”
    “Even done some work for you, Walker, on the quiet,” said Dash, grinning nastily. “I can still show these youngsters how it’s done.”
    “But not too often,” said Shirley. “We’ve earned our retirement.”
    “Don’t you ever miss the old days?” I said.
    “Sometimes,” said Shirley, a bit wistfully. “We had a good war, really, chasing saboteurs and fifth columnists all over America ... And the villains were all so colourful in those days. They had style. The Vril Power Gang, the Nazi Skull...”
    “And Wu Fang,” said Dash. “Put him away a dozen times, but he always got out. We should never have let him drink that Dragon’s Blood, back in ‘forty-one.”
    “Oh, hush, dear,” said Shirley. “He was dying. And he wasn’t a bad sort. For a Chinaman.”
    “Things were different when the Timeslip kicked us out here, back in the seventies,” said Dash. “Appalling place, then and now. So we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. There was a lot to do.”
    “Never much cared for the seventies,” said Shirley. “Terribly cynical times. Though the eighties turned out to be even worse ... I was glad to retire. We stayed involved, though, helping train our successors. I worked with Ms. Fate, you know, when she started out. She’s done very well for herself.”
    “What do you want with us, Walker?” said Dash. “You never show up unless you want something.”
    “I’m looking into Tommy’s disappearance,” I said carefully. “Working with his brother Larry, not Walker. And it would appear that your eldest, Hadleigh, is also involved in some way. I was hoping you could tell me something about