“It’ll wear off,” said Andrews easily. “You take it easy today. I’ll handle the appearance on the Irving appeal. You can’t go into court . . . er . . . looking like that. A spot of sin, huh? You’ll have to give me the address of that spot—for when I’m on vacation,” he added pointedly.
Miss Krumpig gaped, too, when she brought in the morning mail. But she politely covered her amazement with small talk. “Isn’t it hot today, Mr. lies? My! I wish I were at the north pole!” lies jumped. “Don’t do that!”
“Don’t do what, Mr. lies?”
“Don’t make foolish wishes. You never know what they’ll lead to. Don’t ever let me hear you do such a thing again!”
He spent a busy day working on papers and seeing no one; a nice, dull, drab day. He got home in good time, wondering what Linda would have for dinner and what sin he could manage to force himself to commit that night. Not abduction again; definitely not abduction. Barratry seemed promising; now just how could he go about—
Linda wore a warning frown as she greeted him. “People,” she said. “Strange people. I don’t think they’re possible clients but they insist on seeing you. They’ve been here for hours and now there isn’t any more beer left and—” lies felt a trembling premonition. “Stick with me,” he said.
The premonition was justified. He couldn’t have sworn to the face of the abducted girl, but that was certainly her scent. How could she— Then it clicked. Simple for her to read his name and address on the steering rod. And beside her, surrounded by a barricade of empty beer bottles, sat the biggest man that Gilbert Iles had ever seen. He looked like a truck driver; but the truck, to be worthy of him, would have to be huger than anything now on the roads.
“There he is!” the girl shrilled.
The giant looked up, and with no wordy prolog drained the bottle in his hand and hurled it at Iles’s head. It missed by millimeters and shattered on the wall. It was followed by the giant’s fist, which did not miss.
Gilbert Iles found himself sitting on the table in the next room. His ears were ringing with more than Linda’s scream.
“Attaboy, Maurice!” the abductee chortled.
Maurice grinned and visibly swelled. “That was just a starter.”
Linda stepped firmly in front of him. “This is a fine way to act! You come into my house and drink up all my beer and then you sock my husband! Why, a demon’s a gentleman alongside of you. Take that!” And she slapped his vast round face. She had to stand on tiptoe to do it.
“Look, lady,” Maurice mumbled almost apologetically. “Thanks for the beer, sure. And that may be your husband, but he insulted my sister. Now let me at him.” Gilbert Iles tried to get off the table, but his head swam and his knees wonkled. He folded his legs under him and sat like Sriberdegibit, feeling as though he were changing size quite as persistently.
“Any jerk what insults my sister,” Maurice announced, “gets what’s coming to him. And that’s me.”
Linda half-turned to her husband. “Did you, Gil? Oh— But you said you wouldn’t. You promised you wouldn’t.”
“Did I what?” lies held on to the table with both hands; it showed signs of turning into the fringe-beard’s magic carpet.
“Did you in . . . insult her? And after yesterday afternoon—”
“I did not,” lies snapped. “I utterly deny it. I did not insult her.”
“Oh, no?” The abductee advanced on him. “I’ve never been so thoroughly insulted in all my life.”
“Oh, Gil—”
“Look, lady,” Maurice protested, “I got a job to do. You go run along and get dinner or something. You won’t like to watch this.”
“But I did not! I swear it! I simply abducted her.”
The girl’s fingernails flashed at him. “Oh, yeah? Tfiat’s what you said. You tell a girl you’re going to abduct her and you carry her off to hell and gone and leave her stranded and never do a thing to her and if that isn’t an insult I’d like to know what is.”
“And I ain’t standing for it, see?” Maurice added.
Linda sighed happily. “Oh, Gil darling! I knew you didn’t.”
Maurice picked her up with one enormous paw and set her aside, not urgently. “Stick around if you want to, lady. But that ain’t gonna stop me. And thanks for the beer.”
Gilbert Iles’s intention was to slip off the other side of the table. But his wonkling knees betrayed him, and he slipped forward, straight into a left that came from Maurice’s shoelaces.
The magic carpet rose, drifting high over the Arabian sands. All the perfumes of Arabia were wafted sweetly about it. The carpet had another passenger, a houri whose face was veiled but who was undisputably Miss Krumpig. Though markedly affectionate, she kept calling him Maurice and telling him to go to it. Then out of a sandstorm emerged a jinni driving a truck. The truck drove straight at him and connected. The magic carpet turned into a handkerchief in the center of which there was a lake. Upon investigation he saw that this lake was blood and all from his own nose. He was an old man, an old man with a fringe beard, and who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? The jinni appeared again bearing an enormous mammoth tusk which twanged. The jinni raised the tusk and brought it down on his head. A woman’s voice kept calling, “Darjeeling,” or was it, “darling”?
There was a moment’s pause, and Gilbert Iles heard the cry clearly. It was, “Darling, say it. Say it!”
He managed to ask, “Say what?” after spitting out a tooth or two.
“Say it! I can’t because it wouldn’t work for me and I don’t know what might happen but you say it and they’ll go away because I’ve broken three vases on him and he just doesn’t notice. So,
