Roughly half the smooth slab was filled with tiny carved faces. None was larger than his thumbprint, yet the amount of detail in them was astonishing. Peering closely at one, a middle-aged woman, Dylan could make out perfect carved teeth, eyebrows, hair. The expression was twisted and distorted, as were all the others.
Above this miniature gallery was a much larger face, so big that his spread palm could barely obscure it. It was extraordinarily animated and lifelike. The long nose appeared broken. Both cheeks swelled out into whorls of wind, gusting to either side of the chair to break against the smooth manes of the lions. Dylan studied the almost flexible carving, unable to decide whether the master wood-carver had shown a face laughing or screaming.
'This room's off limits, son.'
Startled, Dylan nearly stumbled as he spun around. 'Sorry. I . . . didn't see a sign or anything.'
Glancing at the floor, Saltzmann located and picked up a dirty, battered rectangle of cardboard on which EMPLOYEES ONLY had been crudely painted. He muttered something to himself, set about rehanging it just outside the entrance.
While he was busy with that, Dylan beckoned his wife in.
'Sugar, come take a look at this.'
Marjorie walked over, glanced at the chair, and grimaced. 'That's your taste, all right. Gruesome.'
'Oh, come on, Marjorie. Look at that workmanship; look at those faces, the detail.'
'That's your way of saying you want it?' she asked evenly.
He was abruptly embarrassed. 'Uh, did you find anything?'
She smiled tolerantly. 'A couple of dresses.'
'That's great. Buy whatever you want, hon.'
'You always say that . . . after you find something you want.'
'Wellllll . . .' He knew she was teasing him now.
'Never mind. I'm glad you found something, too. Just don't expect me to sit in it.' Turning, she confronted the watching Saltzmann. 'How much is it?'
'The chair? Well, you know, it really taint far sale.' Dylan's hopes fell apart. 'I've had it goin' on forty-five years.' He looked at his watch. 'But since I'm goin' to die 'round seven-twenty tonight, I s'pose you might as well have it as any other. That is, if its history don't bother you none. I'm bound to tell it to you.'
'History intrigues me, never bothers me.' Dylan turned a proprietary look on the chair, barely reflecting on the old man's macabre sense of humor.
'How old you think that chair is, folks?'
Dylan knew next to nothing about antiques. He let Marjorie guess. 'A hundred years? No, two hundred.'
Saltzmann was grinning, showing gold teeth alternating with dark gaps. His mouth displayed more masonry work –than a Saxon fortress. 'Little less than four hundred.'
Uh oh, trouble, Dylan thought. A chair that old, in this kind of condition, would be expensive.
'It belonged to John Dee. Dr. John Dee?' Both Dylan and Marjorie waited expectantly. The owner looked disappointed. 'He was court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth the First herself, after she got him off the hook for practicing black magic. He invented the crystal ball; leastwise, he told fortune-tellers what it was good for.' He paused for emphasis, added, 'Made the only English translation of the Al Azif.'
'Never heard of it,' Dylan confessed honestly.
Saltzmann grunted, mumbled something about the ignorance of today's youth, and pointed at the back of the chair. 'That's his face, Dr. Dee's, on the top there.'
'That's interesting.' Dylan had his wallet out. 'How much?' He tried to sound casual.
'Oh, it don't matter now. Fifty dollars?'
Dylan made up for the earlier missed breath. 'Okay. Sure.'
Marjorie held the door for him while he wrestled the chair out into the hallway. 'Hurry it up, son,' the owner urged him. 'I've got a lot to do before I'm taken.'
As they finally finished securing the chair in the backseat of the car, Marjorie mentioned the oldster's earlier comment about dying at seven-twenty.
'He fancies himself a wit,' Dylan told her, making sure the chair wouldn't slip on the long drive home. 'Besides, didn't you hear him say as we were leaving that he was getting ready to be taken somewhere? Somebody's picking him up. Now, he can't very well go and die at the same time, can he?'
'I guess not.' Marjorie slipped into the front seat, admiring her old new dresses.
They beat the fog in, for which Dylan was grateful. It curled in around him like a damp pair of pajamas as he climbed out of the car, stretched, and closed the garage door behind them. Then he was carefully extricating the chair from the sedan's backseat as Marjorie unlocked the service porch door.
'Can't wait to see what it looks like in the study.'
Some minutes later Marjorie had fed the cats, hung her dresses, and joined him there. Forty feet below the wide window, surf slapped sharply on the seawall supporting the house. His desk backed that window. Books lined the other three walls, interspersed with hanging house plants, paintings, sculpture, an old rifle, a Polynesian cane, crossed battle-ax and saber, and other paraphernalia collected on their many travels. Somewhere offshore a ship's horn brayed at the fog like a hippo with sinusitis.
The chair rested behind the desk. 'Got to polish it tomorrow.' Loud barking exploded nearby. The study sided on another beach house. 'Damn those dogs! A poodle I could maybe stand. But no, we move up here to be a hundred miles from noise and neighbors, and a month later he moves in with a pair of Great Danes not quite as big as ponies.' The stentorian yapping sounded again.
'You'd better learn to live with it, hon. It's not against the law for a neighbor to own dogs.' She indicated the chair. 'And incidentally, you're going to polish that, not me. I'm not touching it. Gives me the quivers.'
Making a face, teeth protruding over his lower lip, he advanced on her with cawed hands outstretched. 'Ah, beware zee terror of zee Transylvanian chair, my lufly!'
'Stop that. Cut it out, Dylan!' She backed away, swatting nervously at his hands. 'You know how easily I scare.'
He dropped his hands, looked disgusted, 'Oh, for heaven's sake, Marjorie. It's only a dead hunk of wood.'
'Fine.' She retreated toward the bedroom to unpack. 'But you polish it.'
Shaking his head, he turned to admire his acquisition. Now he had time to examine the tiny faces cut into the wood below the large one, time to admire the rich grain of the wood as well as the craftsmanship.
'They don't build furniture like this anymore,' he murmured to himself, sitting down in it. He gripped the fish heads, sat straight. 'Fifty bucks!' The straight wooden back was a bit stiff, but that was to be expected. In sixteenth-century England they built for endurance as much as comfort. The tiny faces pressed into the small of his back, the larger portrait's gaping mouth between his shoulder blades.
'Hope you don't bite, Doc.' It was very dark and quiet outside, the ocean a hidden, heaving mass idling and breathing beneath the fog.
Halfway to the kitchen, Marjorie stopped at a sudden sound, turned, and headed for the study. When she peered in, Dylan was hunched over the typewriter. The chair almost hid him, though the familiar hysterical chatter of the machine was enough to tell her what he was doing.
'Working now? I thought you were exhausted from the drive.'
He stopped, looked back at her. 'I just had a thought I had to get down. You know me, Marj. If I don't do it now, I'll forget it.' A staccato cackle interrupted him.
'Those dogs! I've got to try and reason with Andrus again.'
'Andrus is a lawyer, hon. You know you can't reason with him.' She turned and headed back toward the kitchen.
The coffee was purring to itself, a dark liquid feline sound. She hefted the old-fashioned percolator, poured two cups. Dylan walked in, closing the door on disappointed morning mist. The paper was clutched in his right hand. 'Foggy out still this morning, hon. What's the matter?'
His expression was solemn, thoughtful. 'I wish I hadn't been so hard on Mark Andrus last night. I just ran into his housekeeper, Mrs. Samuels.' Marjorie nodded, waiting. 'Andrus died last night.'
'Oh, Dylan, no.' He nodded. 'How'd it happen?'
