So after an hour or three of genteel country driving, I foundthe genteel tiny sign and gate I was looking for, and turned in, and drovethrough genteel gardened forest between more genteel fieldstone walls. Withthat one-lane driveway between old trees, sunken like an English country road,I wondered what happened gin a body met a body coming through the rye. Or whenthey really wanted to get somelargish fire trucks in. Then I noticed turnouts here and there, wide placeswhere you could pass after negotiating protocol on exactly who perched lower onthe pecking order and had to back up. Anyway, a quarter mile or so of hills andglens and bosky fairy-haunted dells delivered me to fake Gothic stoneoverlooking Scenery.
It spelled Money, with the capital em. I hadn’t liked him,even on the phone. But he’d mailed me a hefty retainer and the check didn’tbounce. That meant I didn’t have tolike him.
He met me at the door. I didn’t know if that was the commontouch or just that he didn’t want the servants to know what was going on. Flipa coin. Anyway, he presented himself as an almost-youngish male wearing “countrycasual” from the money-set shops, corduroy pants and a hand-knit turtlenecksweater in tasteful shades of gray that played off the gray he allowed toinvade the temples of his hair, obviously premature and granting adistinguished air of maturity. I almost checked his face for makeup to go alongwith the rest of the stage set.
He boomed out, “You’d be John Patterson,” in a heartyjust-folks voice. “Malcolm Ridge. Glad you could come out. Like I said over thephone, it’s something I can’t bring to your office.” He extended a paw, and Ishook it.
Of course I could come out. He was paying me a hundred bucksan hour, including travel time. I can get real accommodating with incentiveslike that. I can even get polite. I said I hoped I could help him.
“Come on in.” He waved into the portico and the waiting opendoor, blackened oak studded with wrought-iron nails and fancy hinges, more ofthe Gothic manor look. “Like I said over the phone, I inherited this placeabout a year back from my late uncle. There’s a bit of fun with the ancestralwills and deeds, it goes to the oldest male carrying the Ridge name, and Ilucked out. Don’t worry about gender equity, the other heirs got equal value instocks and bonds and stuff. And they’re just as happy they don’t have to pay tofix the roof. But I never spent much time here, growing up, and I think you canhelp me out with understanding it.”
That carried us through the foyer, dark wood paneling andleaded-glass arrow-slit windows of tiny diamond panes, into a hall that soaredtwo stories up past balconies on three sides under heavy timber trusses. Thefourth wall, we faced stained glass backlit by the autumn sun, blazing greensand golds and reds, good work, maybe real Tiffany, a woodland scene with nymphsand satyrs having fun in a suggestive but not too suggestive fashion. More stage set, twelfth-century,fourteenth-century construction built in the late nineteenth, early twentiethcentury, with electric lights and running water. I wondered what the place costto heat.
To one side, a huge stone fireplace dominated the wall, one ofthose monsters big enough for roasting a whole ox on a spit. Over the manteland patina-green copper hood, in place of a maybe-fake coat of arms, hungcrossed cavalry sabers — real weapons with the battered look of combat, notparade-ground dress-up toys. Homage to the source of the family fortune?
He noticed my interest. “Those belonged to the Old Major. Youcan’t tell from here, but one of the blades is broken at the guard. Bad steel.He took the other away from Johnny Reb, killed him with it, and rode on. Cameback after the fight was over, through the dead, the blood, the groaningwounded, and picked up his broken sword from where it lay next to the man he’dkilled. He’d seen the Reaper, old Josiah, up close and personal. He knew he wasselling death. But I guarantee henever sent a man into battle with a defective weapon. Damn few governments cansay that.”
He nattered on, leading me to the fireplace side of the halland through a heavy door with double locks into a smallish room — wood paneledwalls and an oak roll-top desk, neat shelves of leather-bound books, a roomthat smelled stale and old like it hadn’t been used in a generation or maybefour. A shielded room, I noticedright away, his esteemed ancestor had worried about spying wizards back inthose bad old days. The windows repeated the arrow-slit theme of the foyer, toonarrow for a body to fit through, and they were shielded as well.
The guy nodded at my narrowed eyes and obvious glance around,checking off defensive features. I like clients who pick up on details. Savestime and words and stress.
“This was my great-great grandfather’s office. He had a fewenemies. Not really a nice man, Major Josiah Ridge. No worse than the averageof those days, but that’s not your highest ethical standard.”
At a hundred bucks an hour, I thought I probably should quitgossiping and get down to work. “You said you wanted me to look for hidingplaces?”
He nodded. “Yep. It’s a funny old house. I know they built insecret compartments and such, my uncle showed me a couple. I’d bet he didn’tshow me all he knew, and likely didn’t know all of them himself. You say youcan find that sort of thing?”
“Usually. The energy flow shows hollows. The thing is, mostbuildings have lots of empty space — space between studs in the walls, spacebetween ceiling and the floor above, space closed in under stairs. Sometimes it’stricky to tell that from a hiding place, tell how to open a place once you’vefound it.”
I closed my eyes and opened my mind to the flows of energyaround me. That’s what wizards do. That and training are the only realdifference between us and normal people. The world seethes
