Merlin Slept Here

Chapter 10: Utilizing Windfall Profits

  The lord of that inn was quite rich;

  He had been far and wide.

  The lad he sat by his side

  In all the fairest seat.

  All they drank and ate,

  All that therein were:

  All they made good cheer.

  -from Floris and Blancheflour

  When Bob looked in the basement the next morning, he found that the old gentleman had gone, leaving behind only his business card: P. Johns, Director. He took it to the porch, where Julie was sweeping up broken glass. Clark Devon was seated in a wicker chair with Looper beside him, both enjoying some microwaved pizza.

  Clark smiled at him. “I woke up about half an hour ago all worried about that west portal, so Looper and I went over in the bean field and found that the road is actually open.”

  Bob righted an overturned chair and sat down by him. “Yeah, that’s because I put the inn’s gem in the basement last night.”

  “So that’s it! You had it all the time? Well, when I found I could open the portal, I tried shouting through it the way we do sometimes when we want to find out if there’s someone on the other side. Of course, I didn’t want to go through because that would mean I couldn’t get back here until this evening. But I had a suspicion that old Ali, the next innkeeper, would still be alive and within voice range over there. I knew he had told us earlier that he had a place to hide himself while they were attacking his inn. Sure enough, he yelled back and told me that he was waiting for us with his jeep on the other side. He couldn’t believe it when I told him that the Rebels are all gone.”

  “I can’t believe it either. So what about his inn?”

  “Ali said it had sustained a lot of fire damage, but he says it’s big enough that what’s left will still hold us all. Even better, his food stores were hidden in cellars that weren’t affected at all by the fire. Looks like we can go on through to him whenever we’re ready, this morning or maybe early this afternoon.”

  “No hurry,” said Bob. “Don’t leave until you’re all really up to it. But Clark, this Ali? I’ve got to know. He didn’t remove his inn’s gem so as to close the portal and keep back the Rebels?”

  “No, he didn’t. He knew that the portal was gone temporarily, but he didn’t know why. He thought his own gem was still safe in his inn’s foundation, and of course, he didn’t know you had removed yours. When he checked his own, though, he found that because of the fire some stones had buckled and the gem had been thrown clear. He has it back in place now.”

  “I thought it was something like that. I just wanted to know because the Rebels thought the Magi on that side had deliberately abandoned the ones on this side so as to close the road.”

  “No, we don’t operate that way,” Clark said. “Maybe we should sometimes, but we never do. Anyway, Ali was going to drive back to his inn to get things ready for us as well as he can.”

  “We still have plenty of pizza for you all for breakfast,” Julie said to Clark as she finished sweeping and sat down with them, “and you can take some with you in case Mr. Ali has any problem feeding you all. But we’ll sure miss you Magi. Once your group is gone, it looks like that’s the end of innkeeping for Bob and me.”

  Clark asked what she meant, and they explained to him about the delinquent tax sale. He said he was very sorry but had no idea of how to save the inn. Then for some time the three watched Merlin’s charger chomping on the front yard grass.

  “That horse must be conjured,” Clark commented, “or it would have run away during the shooting.”

  “It was tied up to the Rebels’ air car, or whatever that thing was,” Bob said. “They must have untied it before they headed east.”

  “I guess so. That reminds me that Jane Farrington wants to go back to what’s left of her inn. Harsha, the Indian girl, has told us in sign language that she’ll go back that direction too, but I don’t think she’s going to try to be an innkeeper anymore. I think she’s had enough of that. But when Jane goes back, she’s going to walk to a neighbor’s place for shelter, and then she intends to stay put and rebuild.”

  Bob shook his head in near disbelief. “Now that’s an innkeeper.”

  “By the way, I’m afraid I was in such a hurry last night that I muffed the job on your wall in the living room. I thought I had it firmly back in place, but during the night it opened up again, a hole big enough to drive a truck through. Then it closed by itself again sometime before dawn, but I don’t know how long that will last. It’s kind of embarrassing but it seems to have gone intermittent. I’ll try to get it fixed before we leave.”

  Bob nervously agreed that a spell-repair would be good.

  In the early afternoon the Magi and the two other innkeepers departed, all of those able to do so having signed the register. Ali, waiting on the other side of the west portal, would ferry the weaker Magi to his inn in his jeep. Clark seemed to have forgotten about the problem with the living room wall, and Bob and Julie were too polite to say anything. They hoped for the best, for the wall looked solid enough for the moment.

  In the quiet that followed the guests’ departure, Bob and Julie walked out to get their cars, still parked in the field across the road. There they sat side by side on the hood of the Geo, holding hands and looking back at what was left of the inn. They noted with a mixture of dismay and mirth that the conjured section of living room wall had gone missing again. Most of the windows were broken. Flowers and bushes were trampled. The shed was scorched on one side, and trash was strewn around the yard. Then they looked at each other and smiled. She had made it! Though all the inns to the east were smoldering ruins, this old girl had made it through. It was a shame that she was about to belong to the Bernards, but it was a matter of deep pride that she had stood till the end and had discharged her last group of guests, all rested and fed.

  When they returned to the inn, they began some more cleaning up, including the rehanging of the mirror above what was left of the hearth, for Bob had retrieved it from the yard still unbroken. Soon Bob took a phone call from Mrs. Kemp of the Rayburn County Treasurer’s Office.

  “Mr. Himmel, do you remember that silver certificate you gave me for two dollars? My husband has had a look at it, and it’s worth considerably more than I thought. He says it has a brown seal for Hawaii and that, even though it’s been circulated, it’s easily worth fifty dollars. If you want to stop in here the next time you’re in town, I’ll give you the other forty-eight.”

  Bob thanked her, promising to come by soon.

  “And I’m sorry your grandfather is losing that property out there. Actually, I guess there’s still a little time. The redemption deadline is today at our closing time of five o’clock.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Kemp, but this property is going to be my Uncle Dave’s then.”

  Bob hung up and went back to work cleaning up shards of window glass. He and Julie had decided to turn the inn over to Uncle Dave in the best condition that they could manage. What Dave and Marci would think of the inconstant section of living room wall, he did not know; but he intended to cover it enough to keep the rain out.

  In the late afternoon, after stapling sheets of clear plastic over the many empty window frames, he made his way to the shed to look for a tarpaulin to use on the wall. Within he found what the dwarfs had done with Pyro’s shriveled body: a shallow grave in the dirt floor. Either the dwarfs’ outlandish customs called for burial within a building or they had feared the corpse would be dug up by some roaming animal. The only trace of Pyro that remained was his black coat hanging from a nail in the wall. From the coat’s pockets Bob removed an acetylene torch (the same that the arsonist had used on Bob’s face), boxes of bullets, and several knives. He would have to remember to look for Pyro’s pistol that he had thrown out of the yard. All these items would join the small arsenal of discarded Rebel weapons and ammunition that Julie had already locked away in he
r car’s trunk. What they would do with them in the long run they had no idea.

  As he finished emptying the pockets, both inner and outer, Bob noticed that the coat still felt too heavy. Something was in the lining, or maybe it was bullet-proofed? Feeling through the fabric, he found many lumps, some lighter, some so heavy that they had to be metal. Then he found a concealed zipper. He opened it, reached in, and pulled out a thick wad of small papers. It looked like cash. He stepped to the shed’s one small window for a better look. It was cash. Hundred dollar bills.

  “Julie!”

  “What if they’re counterfeit?” he asked as Julie sorted through one of the wads of hundreds. For some reason he could not understand she was hastily dividing the bills into two piles on the kitchen table. Pyro’s coat also lay on the table, and beside it were bags of coins, a few gems, and many piles of the paper money of various nations—all removed from the lining.

  “They aren’t counterfeit,” she said, standing and hastily gathering one of the two piles she had made and the other wads of U.S. bills that she had not sorted. “I’ve worked the register at the Mart, and they taught us how to spot funny money. Come on, we’ve got to get going.”

  “What?”

  She pointed at the wall clock. “It’s five till five! We’ve got to get to the Treasurer’s Office before they close.”

  “Right, OK. But wait!” he said, pointing at the stack of bills she had left on the table. “You’re leaving some of the American money behind.”

  “Those were printed at times in the future, so we can’t pass them. That’s why I was sorting them. Come on! You drive and I’ll finish sorting the other wads in the car. We’re taking the Geo. It’s got gas in it.”

  He ran out after her. “But what if it isn’t enough money for the redemption?”

  “It’s gotta be! Come on!”

  It was far more than enough money, but they arrived too late. They stood on the hot sidewalk outside City Hall and looked at the locked doors with the plainly posted hours. Bob reached out and rattled the door again.

  “Maybe—maybe if we go around back to the parking lot we can still catch somebody.”

  They went to the back and found a few cars still parked there, but the back doors were also locked. They waited. Soon a rotund, elderly lady came out, who Bob recognized as Mrs. Kemp. She gave them a pained look.

  “What do you want?” she asked sharply.

  “We desperately need to redeem some property on Grantham Road—” Julie began.

  “The deadline’s five o’clock,” interrupted Mrs. Kemp.

  “We know,” Bob said, “ and we’re very sorry we didn’t get here on time. Look, Mr. Kemp doesn’t need to give me any more money for the silver certificate. I’m just glad he got it for his collection. But if you’ll please let us in late for just long enough to redeem my grandpa’s property, we’d be eternally grateful.”

  Mrs. Kemp compressed her lipsticked lips and avoided their eyes. “That is absolutely illegal. Come in here, I want to show you something.”

  She led them into the building and down a hallway to the counter that fronted the Treasurer’s Office. She went behind the counter and, fetching a clock that hung on the wall, brought it forward to them. She showed them its large face. It read five past five.

  “You see this?” she said almost in a growl. Her hand was busy behind the clock, turning its hands back to read one minute till five. “If you had come in here one minute later, I couldn’t do a thing for you. Now give me the money, and I’ll print you a receipt.”

  “Mrs. Kemp, you’re a sweetheart!” Bob said.

  “Shhh. I never did like Dave Bernard, anyway.”

  The money from Pyro’s coat proved to be the salvation of the inn once more. It would take time, but Bob now had plenty of funds to have the place generally renovated: new windows, new wiring, new plumbing, siding, and much more. He wanted to give some of the money to his mother and grandfather, but was unsure how to explain to them how he had acquired it. He could try the partial truth: that a thug had broken into the house, had accidentally killed himself, and that they had found a fortune in his coat. No, that would not do. He would have to give this more thought.

  On the Saturday afternoon after the attack on the inn, Bob was working in the yard when Julie called him in to answer the telephone. As she handed him the receiver, he looked with satisfaction at the diamond engagement ring on her hand.

  “Hello?”

  “Yeah, it’s Deirdre,” his cousin said flatly. “Dad asked me to call you for him.”

  “I don’t know why he doesn’t just speak for himself,” Bob said.

  “Oh. He and Mom are still kind of laid up from what happened the other night. Anyway, we got a call from some woman at the Treasurer’s Office that you redeemed the property just before the deadline. Dad says to tell you he knows you’re broke, and as soon as your check bounces, he’ll—what, Dad?” Bob could hear Uncle Dave growling something in the background. “OK, he’ll expect you out of there immediately, and uh, that he’ll have the county prosecutor on you for the bad check.”

  “I’m surprised he hasn’t had the police out here already—I mean about being stuffed in the tree and all that.”

  “Oh, that was another thing. He doesn’t want you calling the police about that gang because he’s afraid of organized crime. Have you called? No, Dad, he hasn’t. Dad doesn’t want to mess with the Mafia. He’s got an uncle by marriage who was a bookie and…wait a minute, he doesn’t want me to say anything about that.”

  “Anyway, they’re not the Mafia,” Bob said.

  “Yeah, but try to tell him that.” She listened again. “OK, he says don’t kid yourself, that someday you’ll get arrested because of your connections with criminals; and that he knows all about that kind of trick mirror, and it didn’t fool him—he knows how it’s done; and he wants to know if that gang is coming back and what you’re going to do about it.”

  “Tell him I ran them off and they’re not coming back. But tell him I didn’t write any check, that it was cash, and that everything is legit.”

  “I’ll tell him when I get off the phone. Are you sure they’re not coming back?”

  Bob thought he could detect a tone of longing in the question. “Pretty sure, Dee-dee.”

  “Don’t call me Dee-dee! I was almost—I just about had it made.”

  “With a bunch of cutthroats, yeah.”

  “They wanted me. It’s all right, Dad, just a minute.”

  Bob laughed. “Apparently, they’re not the only ones. Deirdre, you’re like a free agent being courted by two sports teams. This is a total laugh, but I think the Magi want you too.”

  “Shut up!”

  “No, really. More than one of them told me that. Of course, I think that’s like trying to recruit Charles Manson to teach Sunday School.”

  Suddenly, Uncle Dave was on the phone, sounding gravelly and tired. “I hope you got all that, buster, because I can back every word of it. You won’t last a week in there. I’ll bring the sheriff around about that bad check.”

  “OK, OK. Ease up, huh? I was just telling Deirdre that—”

  Uncle Dave hung up abruptly.

  Bob and Julie went out to the yard together, talking about his lamentable relatives, and pausing to look at the blue tarp that now covered the chronically missing wall section on the north side of the inn. Before long a man came walking to them across the grass, carrying a light suitcase. Bob was happily surprised to see that it was Herr Stringer. But this was a much older looking Herr Stringer than he had seen just a few weeks ago. His hair was white and his face wrinkled. Bob greeted him warmly, introduced Julie as his fiancée, and asked if he had been ill.

  “Oh, no, not at all,” the German replied. “I’ve simply grown old. This will take a bit of explaining, but fortunately I am not in the terrific hurry that I was when I once came to you. Actu
ally, I’m retired now and indulging in a bit of leisure travel, knocking about, visiting old haunts. Shall we sit on your front porch?”

  As he approached the porch, Stringer paused to look up at Bob’s sign, which had been rehung with a few words added at the top and the bottom. It now read: Bob & Julie’s Restored Wizards’ Inn, Est. 1861.

  “Wizards’ Inn!” he exclaimed, with a trace of the sternness of his younger days. “I remember how you talked such foolishness the day I came here. Ha, wizards!”

  Bob was embarrassed, especially by his silly drawing of the big-nosed conjurer. “Sorry, Herr Stringer. Do you want me to change it?”

  “Ach, no. Young people will have their nonsense. Let’s have a good talk, and you may call me Mark.”

  When they were settled in chairs, he explained to them that he was presently an exception to the rule that all the portal site times move forward in lockstep. Visit someone living in 1462 and then go back and visit him two years later by your own time, and you would find that you had arrived in 1464. By no usual means could a Mage then find his way to that place in 1463 or earlier. Nor could he arrive later than 1464 except by waiting the requisite number of years in his own life. In this respect, the portals adjusted even for the dusk gate effect. Therefore, since it had been some twenty years by Stringer’s own time since he had seen Bob, he should have arrived when Bob and Julie were about forty. But as a special retirement treat, Stringer had been allowed to “knock about,” as he had put it.

  “Keep quiet, Mark, they told me, and don’t draw any attention to yourself, and we’ll give you a special pass. It is a wonderful concession in honor of my many years of faithful service. You will pardon me, but I’m not allowed to explain any more than that. Some uses of the portals are strictly secret. But how happy I was to be able to make this journey. You see, there were so many people I’d never had time to return to and visit, you among them. Soon after I established inns along this road, I was transferred to another area and never seemed to have a chance to come back. But I’ve thought about you often, and often I wished I could tell you how very proud I am of you.”

  Bob was unexpectedly speechless from emotion. Julie filled the gap.

  “Thank you, Mark. But I just wanted to ask something. You see, we’ve had no more Mage guests these last few evenings. With the evacuation complete, we wonder if we should expect anyone? Is there no more need for an inn?”

  “You must not expect to have ever again so many guests in so short a time,” the old man answered, “but be assured that your inn is still in operation. Granted, it may be some time before events bring guests your way again, partly because the Magi road you are on is remote. Did you know that the very name of it was lost? But whatever it was once called, it will now be called the Himmel Road.”

  “No, it should be called Farrington,” Bob protested.

  Stringer ignored this. “Perhaps it is no longer necessary for you to be home every evening. Leave a key where a guest can find it and let himself in. That’s the way with these country inns. In the meantime, if you want more guests, I suggest you advertise the place as a remote and quiet hideaway for Magi with nervous conditions—after it’s properly repaired, of course. You are perhaps not yet aware of the newspaper of the Chosen Ones, but now that the Rebels are in retreat, someone will come along and offer you a subscription one of these days. I see you are surprised, but Magi have their amenities the same as other folk. The paper is delivered through the portals, of course, and it always includes several pages of advertisements. ”

  “So we ought to write up some copy for an ad?” Julie said with a gurgling laugh. “How about ‘Wizards’ Inn: Come stay for a spell’?”

  Stringer looked at her blankly.

  “Actually, I was seriously meaning to make another sign to hang on the front porch,” Bob said, “one that says ‘Merlin slept here.’ So maybe we could put that in the paper too. How’s that for an advertisement?”

  Stringer looked pained. “Twenty years ago I would have advised strongly against it, for a Magi inn is not some carnival attraction to be promoted with sensational phrases. However, I keep in mind that Merlin truly was here, though I understand he did nothing but sleep, and—well, you will do as you think best.”

  Bob winked at Julie. “You know what that means. He has knowledge of the future, and so he already knows we’re going to do it.”

  To his surprise, Stringer laughed. “Ja, I know. So do it, Bob. It will do no harm.”

  After a few more minutes of leisurely conversation, Bob decided to take advantage of his friend’s extensive knowledge of the ways of the Magi.

  “Mark, I touched our inn gem and nothing happened to me, but one of the Rebels took it from me and what was left of him afterward looked freeze dried. Why him and not me?”

  “Simple really, my friend. An anti-greed spell was put on the gem at its making. His avarice triggered it.”

  “So that’s it! And I really didn’t want it for myself, so I squeaked by.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Sheesh, that was a close one. Well, may I ask you something else?”

  “Certainly.”

  “There was a gentleman here the night we had all the trouble,” Bob said, “and his name was Johns. He said he wasn’t a Mage, but he’s definitely connected with them somehow. Who was he?”

  Stringer stared straight ahead and said nothing for a moment. “So he was here that night. I might have guessed. Oh, there’s nothing much to be said about him.”

  “Not much? Mark, this guy was amazing. Come on, what was he about?”

  Stringer replied with irritation. “Do you want me to admit to you that I don’t know exactly who he is? Then I admit it. I can’t say much more than that he is with us, or perhaps I should put it that we are with him. He is—how shall I put it—a special agent.”

  Bob grinned. “OK, so you can’t say much more than that? That means you can say a little more, right? Is he one of the Golden Legion?”

  Stringer exhaled in mild frustration. “Young fellow, you haven’t changed. No, Johns works at a rather higher level than the Legion. And now that you’ve pried that out of me, come, tell me if you still have my stick that I loaned you.”

  Bob assured him that he did, mentioning that Julie had had a chance to listen to it, and fetched it for him from the house. Stringer looked it over, listened to it for a moment with pleasure, and laid it aside. “You won’t mind too much if I take it with me again? Good. And here, I have some things to give you.”

  He opened his suitcase and brought out a wooden award plaque, the kind that includes a newspaper article lacquered to its surface. Bob and Julie held the plaque between them and read it with astonishment. It had the names Robert and Julia Himmel on it and was an award for twenty years of distinguished service as innkeepers. The newspaper article told in three paragraphs about their sterling reputation and their intention to continue with innkeeping for the rest of their lives. The accompanying photograph showed them themselves looking absurdly middle aged.

  “While I was at the convention where I was honored at retirement, I learned that your future selves were unable to come and be honored,” Stringer explained. “Ha, probably you could not tear yourselves away from being here and receiving guests. So anyway I offered to fetch it to you. Of course, that means you’re getting it too early, but you can always put it away somewhere while the twenty years pass.”

  They could only laugh at this, and thanked him.

  “The newspaper is the Chosen Ones’ Tribune, which I was already beginning to mention just now. The editor is a prominent Language Mage, who conjures each issue so that anyone who reads it sees it in that language in which he is most fluent. So it reads in German to me but English to you. But here, I have more for you.”

  Stringer’s other gifts were two books on the study of Kreenspam (basic and advanced), a small Kreenspam dictionary, and
a taped pronunciation guide.

  “You will study every day,” he said with Germanic assertion. “No innkeeper can afford to remain ignorant of the Old Speech. Why, Nineveh forced even his Rebels to learn something of it, though most of them were very poor students, I must say.”

  “What ever became of Nineveh?” Julie asked. “A Mage told us that he will sort of disappear before the Realm is crushed, or maybe that he dies?”

  Stringer smiled. “I beg your pardon, but it is partly to see him that I have come here. I intend to hire a car and go visit him.”

  Julie stuttered for a moment and ended with, “What?”

  “You don’t know that he is in a nursing home in Cincinnati? Of course, in my own time he died long ago, but he is still living now. I see you are both astonished. Then to make up for telling you so little about Johns, let me fill you in about Nineveh. Perhaps you know that he was born in Cincinnati and that he used to own and manage several miniature golf courses? No? He went out of business in 1974, unfortunately bankrupt. His real name, by the way, is Fred Lee and, being rather short, he was sometimes known as Little Freddy Lee, even in his own advertisements for the golf courses. This is all very commonplace, I’m sure, except that Mr. Lee was a Mage.

  “Like most Magi he had been poor, and he had tried to remedy his poverty with these putting courses. After his bankruptcy, he tried business again, but this time it was not so respectable. He turned to pushing illegal drugs. Around that time his Mage powers, which were never much, evaporated. So it always happens with heart-defectors such as he. But he recruited a few thugs and, as a crime boss, got very rich, since the portals made him and his people almost impossible for authorities to catch. I should have said that by means of deception he got control of quite a few portals from an old Mage named Nehushtan who was failing in health. Mr. Lee gradually expanded his gang of thugs into a small army. He assumed the name Nineveh during that time.

  “Over a period of about twenty-five years he ravaged and corrupted whole worlds, including parts of this one. He did this not as an end in itself but as a byproduct of exalting himself and building what he called the Realm. He adopted a lavishly royal life style and lived in a remote palace in a time before civilization. But he was failing physically, so his son took over more and more of the management of his evil operation.

  “When his health went really bad and he was old and beginning to get confused in his mind, he tried seeking cures from the future, but he was hindered because his identity was unknown to the records of future times. The hospital authorities were very suspicious. So with his old, genuine ID in hand, he went to a hospital in twentieth century Cincinnati instead. He was desperate enough to try this even though there were warrants out for his arrest in that time and place. This was, to you, just a few months ago. In hospital his dementia got worse and he was soon unable to think clearly enough to be fit to leave. Quite naturally, they placed him in a nursing home. While he was there the many criminal charges against him were dropped, since he was not fit to stand trial. He remains in the home in a deplorable state.”

  Bob had been listening with open mouth. “So the arch-villain of the universe just sits around with slobber on his chin?”

  “Not continually, or so I understand. Some days he can converse a little. I hope to catch him on a good day.”

  Little Freddy Lee woke up to find three visitors by his bed.

  “And who might you be?” he said grumpily.

  “I beg your pardon,” said one of them, an old man with an accent. “The staff said we could have a few minutes with you. They say you’ve had no friends or family to visit you since you came. How are you, Mr. Lee?”

  “You one of those pastors?”

  “No, sir. I’m a retired travel agent. My young friends are innkeepers.”

  “Um.” He eyed the young man and woman suspiciously, then looked to the old man again. “You gonna get me out of here? I want out. Tell ’em I’m ready to leave. Who are you? Are you Junior?” His visitor was silent. “Listen, Junior, we got to deal with these damned Magi. Give ’em the usual. Are you listening? I’ve got a plan to get me out. Don’t tell them here, it’s a secret. You got to get me out of this bed. Do you know that I’m cold? Junior?”

  “I’ll get you another blanket,” the girl said, and she did, pulling it from a nearby drawer. She spread it over him. “That better, Mr. Lee? Do you want something to drink?”

  Out in the sunshine, Bob said to Mark and Julie, “That’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “I wish we lived closer,” Julie said. “He needs someone to visit him regularly.”

  Bob was ready to disagree with this but caught himself. “Yeah, he really does.”

  He had thought only of Nineveh’s crimes and his disgusting ego, but Julie had seen his loneliness. She could love even him. What a girl.

  The End of Merlin Slept Here

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