The water lapped peacefully at the piles under the bar. The sailor in the corner switched off the table light and let the clear moonshine bathe the blonde opposite him. The radio was turned so low that it was only a murmur. The man with the fringe beard made a peculiarly elaborate pass and ended up with a gold piece balanced on the tip of each of his five outspread fingers.
“May I be eternally cursed!” lies repeated. Linda objected to strong language; for some reason she permitted cursedwhile damning damned. “But gold,” he added. “How does that work? Does the government let you keep all that gold because it’s a professional tool? Or are they phonies?”
“I know,” said the little man sadly. “Laws never make any allowance for magic. And They never make any allowance for laws. I never can convince them that Their gold isn’t any earthly use to me. Oh well—” He made another pass and said a word that seemed to have no vowels. The seven coins on the bar vanished.
“Beautiful,” said Gilbert Iles. “I’d like to have you around when the prosecution brings in some unexpected exhibits. How’s about another drink on that?”
“No, thank you.”
“Come on. I’m celebrating, I am. I can still say ‘prestidigitation’ because I’ve got trained articulation, but I’m soaring up and up and up and I want company. Just because Linda stayed home with a headache, do I have to drink alone? No!” he burst forth in thunderous oratorical tones. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, how can you sit there unmoved and behold this rank injustice practiced before your very eyes? Hearts of the hardest stone would melt, thaw and resolve themselves into a dew before—”
His rounded periods drowned out the radio and the lapping of the waves. The sailor looked around, puzzled and belligerent.
“I’m sorry,” said the little man. “But I shouldn’t ever take more than one. I take two, and things begin to happen. I remember that night in Darjeeling—”
“So—” Gilbert Iles’s voice took on the tone of a hectoring cross-examiner. “You remember that? And what else do you remember? Do you remember the pitiful state of this defendant here, parched, insatiate, and driven by your cruelty to take refuge in the vice of solitary drinking? Do you remember—”
The sailor was getting up from his table. The bartender sidled up to the fringe-bearded man. “Look, Mac, if he wants to buy you a drink, O.K., so let him buy it.”
“But, colleague, if things happen—”
The bartender glanced apprehensively at the sailor. “Things are going to happen right now if you don’t shut him up. Well, gents,” he added in louder tones, “what’ll it be?”
“Gin and tonic,” said the little man resignedly.
“Hot ruttered bum,” Gilbert Iles announced. He heard his own words in the air. “I did that on purpose,” he added hastily.
The other nodded agreeably.
“What’s your name?” lies asked.
“Ozymandias the Great,” the prestidigitator said.
“Aha! Show business, huh? You’re a magician?”
“I was.
“Mm-m-m. I see. Death of vaudeville and stuff?”
“Not just that. The trouble was mostly the theater managers. They kept getting worried.”
“Why?”
“They get scared when it’s real. They don’t like magic unless they know just where the mirrors are. When you tell them there aren’t any mirrors—well, half of them don’t believe you. The other half tear up the contract.”
The drinks came. Gilbert Iles paid for them and sipped his rum while he did an exceedingly slow take. Then, “Real!” he echoed. “No mirrors— May I be—”
“Of course there was some foundation for their worry,” Ozymandias went on calmly. “The Darjeeling episode got around. And then there was the time the seal trainer talked me into a second gin and tonic and I decided to try that old spell for calling up a salamander. We wanted to see could we train it to play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’; it would have been a socko finale. The fire department got there in time and there was only about a thousand dollars’ damage, but after that people kept worrying about me.”
“You mean, you are a magician?”
“I said so, didn’t I?”
“But a magician— When you said you were a magician, I thought you just meant you were a magician. I didn’t dream you meant you were a magician.”
“Only a white one,” said Ozymandias deprecatingly.
“Then those coins— They came from—”
“I don’t know just where they come from. You reach out with the proper technique and They give them to you.”
“And who are They?”
“Oh—things—you know, colleague.”
“I,” Gilbert Iles announced, “am drunk. What else can you do?”
“Oh, any little odd jobs. Call spirits from the vasty deep, that kind of thing. Work minor spells. Once”—he smiled—“I taught a man how to be a werewolf of good will. And then”—his round face darkened—“there was that time in Darjeeling—”
“What could you do now to help me celebrate? Could you cure Linda’s headache?”
“Not at a distance. Not unless you had something personal of hers—handkerchief, lock of hair? No? The falling off of sentimentality does play the devil with sympathetic magic. You want to celebrate? I could call up a couple of houris I know—nice girls, if a trifle plump—and we—”
lies shook his head. “No Linda, no houris. I, sir, have a monogamous soul. Monogamous body too, practically.”
“Do you like music?”
“Not very.”
“Too bad. There’s a first-rate spirit band that plays the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music. Let’s see; we could—” He snapped his fingers. “Look, you’re Taurus, aren’t you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You were born in May?”
“Yes.”
“Thought so. Something about your aura. Well, how would you like to have a wish granted?”
“Which wish?” said Gilbert Iles. It was not an easy phrase even for trained articulation.
“Any wish. But think it over carefully first. Remember the story about the sausages. Or the monkey’s paw. But for the next minute or two you can have any wish granted.”
Ozymandias reached into the air and plucked a lighted cigarette. “Be deciding on your wish, because there isn’t too much
