by Mel Gilden
“If you make trouble for me, you’re in big trouble—that’s all.”
Silverwhite was still flinging spells into the air, trying to get one to take. He was looking chagrined and desperate now. I knocked over some glassware, and it crunched beneath my shoes as I continued backing. I was probably looking a little desperate, myself.
“Look, mister—” I said, but was interrupted when he lunged at me. I ducked out of his way and pushed open a pair of French doors. I was now outside on Silverwhite’s back lawn, where I hoped I would have more room to maneuver. Silverwhite followed, watching us closely but keeping his distance, like the referee in a prize fight.
We danced like that while I wondered how to escape this guy. He seemed awfully determined, but a little unsure about what. The ducks had flown away at the first sign of trouble, but the man on the bridge seemed fascinated by the show.
I growled and rushed the guy hoping he would back up, and to my surprise, he did. He was now at the edge of the canal. “Smart boy,” he said as if it were an insult. “Smart boy with big plans.”
“You’re not making any sense,” I said.
He laughed with disgust. “You’re a fine one to talk.” He saw Silverwhite coming closer. “And tell your pet magician to stay away from me.”
“Anything you say,” I said and rushed him again.
He took a step back and windmilling his arms, fell into the water. He thrashed around as anybody would, and while he was busy I jumped in after him.
The water was cold and about four feet deep, coming up just to my armpits. He bobbed to the surface sputtering, but before he could catch too much breath I grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him back under. I didn’t want to drown him, just slow him down a little. Maybe we could still talk things over.
Suddenly my hands were empty. He hadn’t twisted out of my grasp or gone limp, he just wasn’t there any more. I looked around in the murky water and saw nothing but murk.
“Need some help?” the guy on the bridge called—a little late, I thought.
“No, thanks,” I said.
I walked carefully to the bank on the slippery bottom and Silverwhite put out his hand to pull me onto the grass. I turned to look back out at the water and saw that nothing had came up. The ducks returned, though. I suppose that was something.
“Where did he go?” Silverwhite asked.
“I thought maybe you would know,” I said.
“No.”
“Modesty?”
“No, not really, old chum. I don’t know why or how that gentleman disappeared. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Unless he turned into a fish and swam away.”
“If he did, he didn’t do it with magic. I would have noticed. Did you ever find out what he wanted?”
“He just warned me away. He seemed a little unclear about why.” I looked down at myself. “The water seems to have made me wet.”
“Tsk, tsk, old chum,” Silverwhite said. “Lord Slex won’t like that. Come in and put on a robe while I do a little domestic magic.”
Like many people, I knew a little domestic magic too, and I could have taken care of myself. But having someone else do it was pleasant, and Silverwhite would have been insulted if I hadn’t let him help, so I let him. Besides, I was still shaking a little, charged up by fear and exertion.
He dried my clothing and pressed what needed pressing, all with magic. He could have been a pretty good valet if he’d been better at taking orders. Meanwhile, I dried myself the old-fashioned way with a fluffy towel and thought about who my attacker was and what he wanted. I went over the whole incident again and couldn’t make it make any more sense than a single piece of a jigsaw puzzle. I wanted to know more, but that didn’t mean I wanted the guy to come back.
“Assuming he wasn’t crazy,” I said, “he knew something about my future that I don’t know.” I shook my head. “Time travel?”
While Silverwhite watched with pleasure, my shirt folded itself neatly. My pants, already dry, creased in exactly the right place.
“The formulas necessary for time travel require a small book to record them,” he said, “and a lot of equipment not even I possess. Still, old chum, if he came prepared.…” He shrugged and handed me my pants.
“And where did he go?” I asked.
“Perhaps he dissolved,” Silverwhite suggested. “It’s been known to happen.”
“What? When?”
He told me a long involved story about a sheik and a camel and a dram of rancid coconut milk. I think he got it from the Arabian Nights. By the time he finished I had all my clothes on and I was once again fit for my meeting with Lord Slex. That had probably been his intention all along, to give me a chance to calm down. I had stopped shaking, but I was still worried. Nobody enjoys being attacked, especially by someone as unpredictable as my attacker.
“We do not know who the guy was or what he wanted or how he got here—do we know how we got here?” I asked as I tied my tie.
“No,” Silverwhite said. “It wasn’t even magic. I checked.”
“Figures,” I said. “So we don’t know any of those things or where he went or how.”
“Finding out should keep you occupied for a while.”
“Sure. Between that crazy guy and Lord Slex I guess I’m set for life. How about one of those beers you offered me earlier?”
“Coming right up, old chum.”
CHAPTER THREE
CRONYN RETURNS
For the first time in many years I was driving up Western Avenue to Stilthins Mort, the wizard college that crouched at the top of the boulevard like a gargoyle. A newspaper hack once said the college looked as if it were guarding the fairy kingdom of Griffith Park, the huge hilly green acreage that lay just beyond.
The last time I had visited Stilthins Mort was as a failed undergraduate with no more talent for wizardry than a baked potato, hold the sour cream. After I’d gotten used to the idea, washing out had actually been a relief.
I made my left turn off Western and into the college parking lot, where a curtain of gossamer that was almost invisible in the daylight prevented me from passing the yellow guard shack. A uniformed guard stepped out of the shack to ask me what I wanted.
“Turner Cronyn to see Lord Zorn Slex,” I said, trying to sound as if I dropped in on one of the board members every day.
The guard referred to something in his shack and nodded. He wiggled his fingers, doing a little security magic, and the gossamer curtain faded to nothing. I waved at him jauntily as I drove on.
The car’s engine labored as I drove up the hill to the first building, which was Administration. Like the other buildings farther up, it was a big gothic pile designed to look like a medieval church. Students and faculty strolled along the paths and sidewalks, everybody on important business.
I found a place to park and was about to walk inside under a stained glass window depicting a bearded old gentleman wearing a conical hat and a long robe covered in stars and quarter moons. He was waving his hands over a smoking cauldron. Though the smoke rising from the cauldron looked as if it might be trying to solidify into a beautiful woman, at the moment the smoke was still just smoke.
But I didn’t go inside right away. Students jostled around me while I remained an annoying obstruction in the doorway, looking at a short gnarled man who watched me from behind a bush. He was dressed in a fire-engine red suit and tie. His shoes were shiny black, which made the suit look even redder. When he saw me glance in his direction, he turned his back to me and made a big production about tying his shoe—but not before I saw that he had a cauliflower nose, a rounded pebbly object in the middle of his face. A lot of dark coarse hair stuck out at odd angles from the top of his head, and from inside his ears, giving him a disturbing family resemblance to the customer I’d met in Silverwhite’s lab. That in itself was no crime, so I tried to keep my paranoia under control. He didn’t look like a student to me, but you never know. I looked like a student when I was here,
but few scholars had been less scholarly. The little guy didn’t do anything startling, and I had business, so I went inside.
Inside, the medieval theme continued. The cool dim hallway was lined with doors, each of which was made of rough-hewn wood inset in its own archway. The door handles looked like big bald brass heads, and the keyholes were big enough to put your fist into. The keyholes were fakes, of course. You wouldn’t need a key to get into any of those rooms, just the right spell.
Though I hadn’t ever been really happy at Stilthins Mort it was good to be back. I felt a certain satisfaction in walking casually over the closely laid stones of these crowded hallways, relaxed in the knowledge that all my homework assignments had been turned in years ago.
At the end of the hallway was a large mirror in a frame that looked as if it had been constructed of tarnished armor, mostly helmets and breastplates. I squinted at myself, trying to make myself look more handsome by force of will alone. But no. I still had the big mouth and the little piggy eyes. I sighed and went on.
Just around the corner I found Lord Slex’s office, its door ajar. I had my hand on the doorknob when a woman’s voice called out from inside. “Oh, please,” she said with some disgust. I didn’t think she was talking to me.
“Do I need to prove myself to you?” a male voice asked. It was Lord Slex, but without the confident air I recalled. “Should I impress you with simple tricks like some first-year student?” Though a few people looked in the direction of the door and giggled, none of them stopped to pick up the thread of conversation.
“That would be an improvement,” the woman said, “but you would still bore me. I’m tired of giving you chances to pick up the pace. Besides,” she went on as smoothly as a snake flicking its tongue, “first-year sleight of hand is a little beyond you, isn’t it, darling?” I never heard anyone say “darling” with less sincerity.
“That was uncalled for,” Lord Slex said.
“The truth is always called for, darling.” Her voice was a lot closer to the door now. I backed away and listened from the next archway down the hall.
“Please don’t go,” Lord Slex said.
“Good-bye, darling,” the woman said. “And the next time you try to pull a rabbit from a hat, make sure you have a rabbit.” She chuckled musically. “And a hat, too.”
The door opened wide then. The woman was a little taller than I was, perhaps because of her lime-green high heels, and dressed in a skirt and blouse ensemble designed to show off her figure, which would have been evident if she’d been wearing a gunny sack. A purse that matched her shoes exactly hung over one shoulder. Instead of hair atop her head she had what looked like a single red flame, but it gave off no heat and I smelled nothing burning. I had never seen anything like it before. The astonishing things they did with glamour spells these days.
Her face was beautiful, with good bones giving it a solid structure. It was a placid face despite the scene she’d played out in the office. As she pulled the door shut she gave me a smile that made me feel as if I’d won the big award. I turned and watched her part the crowds. She was a one-woman parade.
It was none of my business, of course, but I wondered who she was. And what she was doing tonight. And whether she liked middle-aged detectives with big mouths and squinty eyes. “Get a grip, Cronyn,” I ordered myself, and knocked on Lord Slex’s door.
CHAPTER FOUR
THREE PACK RATS
During the short silence that followed I imagined Lord Slex wondering whether the woman had returned. “Come in,” he invited after a while. So I went in.
Lord Slex was standing in the middle of his office with his hands behind his back. He stared hard at the floor as if some important message were written there.
At last he looked over at me. “How are you, Mr. Cronyn?” he asked and shook my hand. His hand was warm and dry.
“Fine, sir. And you?” I wasn’t just being polite. He probably needed to tell somebody about what had just happened, and I was ready to be that person, but I didn’t want to drag the story out of him.
“Fine,” he replied as if he was thinking about something besides his condition. Using his entire body, he shook off his pensive mood and went to sit behind his desk. It was covered with papers and books except for an area right in front of him, on which a skrying ball stood.
On one corner, angled so visitors could see it, was a framed photograph of a young Lord Slex and two other men. The Lord Slex in the photograph was many pounds thinner than the man who sat before me. The three men were standing in front of a Duesenberg Suzerain, a very fancy automobile that had been new about fifteen years before. With its two-tone paint job, chocolate with accents of a warmer light caramel color, it looked good enough to eat.
Bookshelves along three walls of the office carried everything from paperbacks to enormous tomes that were bound in ancient leather and clasped shut with golden hardware. An orrery stood in one corner of the room and a world globe in another. Dust floated in the columns of light that slanted in through high windows and fell noiselessly to the floor.
“It’s been a long time,” Lord Slex said once he’d gotten comfortable.
“Almost twenty years,” I said. If the talk got any smaller, I’d need a microscope to see it.
“Too bad you left. I still believe we might have made a wizard out of you eventually.”
“That’s nice of you to say, sir, but I don’t think so. I’d reached my ceiling of abstraction. The spells, formulae, and philosophy became too difficult. Besides, if I’d gotten my degree I would have lost everything during Prohibition. As it was, I almost had my private investigator’s license revoked.”
Lord Slex nodded gravely. “Not that it matters if you are working at Spell-Mart.”
“That was just a cover. I’m a full-time private investigator. And I still have all my textbooks. I can’t seem to make myself throw them away.”
“Really? Impressive.”
We both shook our heads over the general strangeness of life. From the looks of his office, he was something of a pack rat himself. He smiled at me across the desk and I suddenly felt responsible for getting the show on the road. “So,” I said, “what can I do for you? You certainly didn’t invite me here just to find out if I wanted to re-enroll.”
“No.” He seemed reluctant to continue. I waited. He’d go on. They always do.
“We have a graduate student here by the name of Misty Morning,” he explained when he began to speak again. “She is quite brilliant, actually, and not a little eccentric. She has already registered some important patents: the industrial gravity shunt and the car-of-a-different-color, to name just two.”
I’d actually heard of the car-of-a-different-color, but it was a little out of my price range. My Puck was blue when I bought it, and it would stay that way. “And I come into this where?”
Lord Slex rubbed the baggy skin beneath an eye with one finger, then set his hand back onto his desk exactly where it had been. “Ms. Morning is working on a new project,” he said, “something very important that could not only make her a lot of money but add infinite prestige to the reputation of this college.”
“Infinite prestige,” I remarked. “That’s quite a bit. Must be some project. What is it?”
He opened his hands as if to prove they were empty. “Ms. Morning is keeping the exact nature of the project to herself. The truth is, not even the board knows what it is. But we do know this, Mr. Cronyn: We don’t want her project to fall into the wrong hands. That’s where you come in. We want to hire you as her bodyguard.”
“Whose hands exactly are you worried about?” I asked.
“Oh, the usual,” Lord Slex said, affecting a casual air. “Other colleges, industrial spies—that sort of thing.”
“Given adversaries like those, my professional opinion is that Ms. Morning wouldn’t be in much physical danger. Would I be protecting Ms. Morning or her project?”
“That’s needlessly cynical,” Lord Slex said. “Yo
u would be protecting both, of course. And let me assure you that colleges and industrial spies sometimes play rougher than you imagine. What are your fees?”
My fees? I didn’t know whether I should charge him at all. Lord Slex had been my advisor when I was in school here, and he’d always been straight with me, if not always sympathetic. On the other hand, I was in business and he was obviously speaking to me as a professional. Plus the fact that Stilthins Mort was hardly a broken member. I wasn’t greedy, but at last practicality won out. “I normally get a hundred a day plus expenses.”
He slid a check across the desk. I picked it up and saw it was already made out to me for $700. “Here’s a week’s retainer,” he said. “I hope that’s satisfactory.”
I knew better than to ask how he’d happened to have that check prepared. “You’re good,” I admitted.
“There is one more thing,” Lord Slex said while I folded the check and put it into my wallet.
I looked at him expectantly.
“I want to put a spell on your face to improve your appearance.”
I continued looking at him, but my expression was now more surprised than expectant. “And why would that be?” I asked. I was pleased to see that my question made him a little uncomfortable.
“When you meet Ms. Morning, you will see that she is exceptionally beautiful. I’ve heard some of her students refer to her as a babe.”
He waited for me to say something, but I refused to cooperate. This was his party.
“The truth is, Mr. Cronyn, I don’t believe you are handsome enough to be a convincing escort for Ms. Morning.”
I studied his expression for signs of gaiety, but he seemed quite serious. “Maybe what you really want is an actor to play a bodyguard,” I said. “I understand that some of them can be pretty convincing.” I wanted to throw his check at him but controlled myself. There is always time to lose an assignment.
“Now, now, Mr. Cronyn. Let’s not get testy. I don’t intend to change your appearance entirely, merely to widen your eyes a little, tighten your lips, and square off your chin. You’ll still recognize yourself in the mirror. Probably.” A momentary smile slipped across his face and slinked away.
