The Disappearing Dwarf (35 page)

Jonathan realized suddenly that he’d been staring for a long time at the head in the jar. Zippo was tugging on his coat, Ahab was again silent, and Selznak’s mocking laughter filled the hallway around them. But still no goblins dashed in; no skeletons lurched out. Instead, as a sort of counterpoint to Selznak’s laughter, came a low throaty chuckle – a jolly sort of laugh, altogether out of place in that room full of horrors. Jonathan peered back in to see Selznak, white-robed and without his familiar hat on, leading poor Squire Myrkle along toward the table in the center of the room.

The Squire had a faraway look in his eye – the look of a man lost in a pleasant dream. If Selznak hadn’t been leading him by the wrist, the Squire probably would have simply stopped and stood. He’d clearly been mesmerized and was in a state of passivity. Otherwise he appeared unharmed. He hadn’t lost any weight, still looked as if he’d been shoveled into his clothes pyramidally. Jonathan was reminded of Quimby’s Pillar of Hyglea and of his calling for an additional bolt of cloth.

Selznak made a grand effort to hoist the Squire onto the table, but nothing came of it. Squire Myrkle stood and looked at him with a dreamy grin. He tried again, pushing on the Squire’s shoulders and tugging on his legs, but it was like trying to move a piano. Finally he disappeared from view, leaving the Squire standing there placidly.

Ahab whimpered in his cage, as if he knew that the poor Squire was about to come to harm. Suddenly Jonathan had a fleeting vision of the Squire rowing without a head through the night fog on the Tweet River. He had hefted his cudgel, motioned to Zippo to follow him, and taken one step across the threshold when he heard Selznak’s voice. He stopped, hidden by the door, and edged back out, taking up his vigil. It would be better, doubtless to lay into the Dwarf once he’d gotten underway on the Squire.

Selznak strode into view waving a half-peeled banana in the Squire’s direction. Squire Myrkle took it and munched away at it slowly, sitting down as he did so on the low table. Whereupon Selznak pushed him back, heaved his legs up onto the table, and began fiddling among his instruments, selecting a long curved scalpel and holding it up in the sunlight to have a look at its edge.

The Squire worked his way through the banana and left the peel spread out across his face like a limp squid. Selznak plucked it off and threw it to the floor, then began to probe with his fingers along the Squire’s throat. If ever there was a time to rush in shouting and thrashing, this was it.

But Jonathan didn’t move. A peculiar voice, just then, issued from somewhere high overhead in the room, a voice that made Selznak look up with a start. It sounded for all the world like someone talking through a speaking trumpet or a long tube, and it said the most peculiar things.

‘Str-a-aw-ber-r-ry pie,’ came the voice, stretching the words out like a ghost might do if it were setting in to haunt someone. ‘Choc-o-late fudge! Ro-o-oast goose! Che-e-e-se!’ Selznak looked about frantically.

‘Who is it!’ he shouted. ‘Who’s there! Zippo, if that’s you I’ll turn you into a scumfish!’

Zippo moaned and clutched Jonathan’s elbow. For a moment there was silence. Then, again from overhead came the words ‘Roly-poly pudding! Peaches and cre-e-e-eam!’ Selznak threw his scalpel to the ground and stomped about in a rage, looking up into the ceiling above. Jonathan hunkered down and squinted up into the air, wondering why such things were being uttered and why they sent Selznak into such a rage. He spotted the source of the voice at just about the same time as Selznak did. There, poking out from between iron balusters that supported a railing along an open alcove above, was the open end of a dark cone.

‘
Du Bois!
’ Selznak shouted, shaking his fist. ‘You’ll pay for this intrusion. You’ll wake up with the head of a duck! I swear it.’

But Miles, who was speaking through the end of his conical cap, paid Selznak little heed. ‘Prime ribs of beef!’ he crooned. ‘Au jus!’ Yorkshire pudding! Creamed corn and deviled eggs. Hot coffee and cinnamon rolls! Apple pie!’ At the mention of apple pie, Squire Myrkle sat up on his table and looked around. Selznak hopped about making a vain effort to stuff cotton into the Squire’s ears. ‘Pay him no mind!’ the Dwarf shouted. ‘I command it! Hocus pocus!’ Selznak waved a pocketwatch in front of the Squire’s face, frantically trying to put him under again.

Squire Myrkle plucked the pocketwatch from the Dwarf’s hand and shoved it away into the pocket of his Quimby coat.

‘Veal cutlet!’ Miles shouted from above. ‘Bailey-bob stew! Gumbo! Fried potatoes! Pineapple upside-down cake!’

Selznak gave up his efforts, raced over to a long, apparatus-loaded table, and began working at a vial of white powder. He dipped the head end of a stuffed newt into it, then shaking it to and fro and mumbling, he advanced toward the Squire. Jonathan hadn’t any idea what the powder was, but he didn’t like the look of it a bit, so he pushed open the door with a slam-bang and jumped into the room yowling and shaking his cudgel.

‘Bing!’ the Squire cried, heaving himself off his table and standing there woozily looking about him. ‘The Squire will eat now. The Squire has been promised amazing foods.’

Jonathan hadn’t any time to discuss food. He dashed across and pulled open Ahab’s cage. Free at last, the dog leaped barking toward Selznak whom he very apparently didn’t much like. The Dwarf advanced upon him waving the stuffed newt and grinning. Squire Myrkle, catching sight of the plump newt, lumbered that way too, yanking his cap down over his forehead and swinging his arms ponderously.

Jonathan grabbed Ahab by the collar and dragged him back out of the way of the sprinkling dust that hovered in a little cloud before the Dwarf. ‘Zippo!’ Jonathan shouted. ‘Zippo!’ But Zippo was nowhere about. Jonathan left the Dwarf to the Squire and pulled Ahab out toward the door. He yanked the key out of his pocket, dropped it, scrabbled around for it on the floor, and found it. Then he thrust it into Ahab’s mouth, hoping fervently that he wouldn’t swallow it. Ahab spit it out and looked at it. ‘Bring this to the Professor!’ Jonathan shouted holding Ahab’s nose between his hands and putting the key back into his mouth. ‘To the Professor!’

Ahab turned and bounded out of the room in a terrible hurry – off, Jonathan hoped, to find Professor Wurzle.

Jonathan turned back toward Selznak and the Squire. Squire Myrkle had wrested the newt from the Dwarf, and he held it by the tail, shaking it in Selznak’s direction, laughing all the while. Selznak was making a grand effort to get out his way and to avoid being dusted. It soon became evident why. The Squire suddenly gave off his sprinkling and yawned widely, then slumped to the floor in a heap.

Selznak then turned his attention toward the balcony above, from which the smoke of burning herbs wafted in long, gray searching tendrils. Miles was voicing some sort of chant there, and was peeking over the railing, pointing a conjuring hand in Selznak’s direction.

The Dwarf retreated toward his vials and jars and philtres. ‘Cheeser!’ he called, motioning toward Jonathan, who was bent over the heaped Squire. Jonathan looked up at him, but didn’t at all like the grin on the Dwarf’s face.

‘Don’t go near him!’ Miles shouted from above. ‘Get away from him!’

Miles gestured wildly with his arm toward the door, knocking two rubbery-looking dried bats off the iron railing and onto the floor below. ‘
Damn!
’ he cried, watching the bats fall. The first, when it hit, burst into flame and lay fizzling there. The second plopped beside it and jellied out into a little pool of black gunk.

‘Fire and water!’ Selznak cried, rummaging among his devices. ‘Radical heat and moisture! I’ll show you radical heat!’ With that he showered Miles with a handful of little balls that burst into flame round the magician’s head, one of them landing in his hair. Miles yowled and pulled on his cap as Selznak laughed and pointed at him.

Jonathan wondered for a moment at the antics of the two necromancers, but decided fairly quickly to take Miles’ word for it and leave Selznak alone. He hadn’t any real desire anyway to have his hair ignited. Instead, he bent over the prostrate Squire, hooked his hands beneath the Squire’s shoulders, and heaved, moving him about three quarters of an inch and very nearly sacrificing his back in the bargain. He heaved again and then again, wishing that Zippo hadn’t run out on him. Just as he did, in through the door dashed a wild-eyed Zippo, waving, of all things, the Lumbog globe and shouting. ‘I’ve got it! I’ve got it!’

‘Help me with the Squire!’ Jonathan didn’t care much for the Lumbog globe at the moment. Zippo bent over and tugged on the Squire’s arm with his right hand, fumbling the globe with his left.

‘Put the bloody thing down,’ cried Jonathan.

‘Don’t!’ Miles shouted from above.

Zippo looked up to see who in the world it was yelling at him, but what he saw, to his wild dismay, was the leering face of Selznak the Dwarf, whose hand was stretched out toward him. Tattooed on the palm of the Dwarf’s hand were three cryptic signs – a pentagram, a star, and a pair of eyes, one of them wide with terror and the other one sly and winking. Zippo looked into Selznak’s face, shouted in despair, and flung the globe at him. Then he turned and rushed yowling from the room.

The globe glanced against Selznak’s forehead and sent him reeling. If he hadn’t been so close, and if the globe hadn’t struck him such a sliding blow, the battle would have ended right then.

He staggered into his table of potions, upsetting the jar of white dust into which he had dipped the newt. The jar broke, and a little flurry of powder rose in a cloud. A cage full of birds – sparrows or finches or something – fell beside it and broke open, liberating a score of little birds, which flew out through the dust cloud, got about six or eight feet farther, then began dropping one by one. Some few of them managed to fly almost to the ceiling before plummeting to the stones.

Jonathan, fearful of the drifting cloud that had laid the Squire and the birds low, threw all his effort into dragging his friend toward the door. Squire Myrkle slid inch by inch across the smooth stones until Jonathan could drag him no more.

Selznak had recovered a bit and was shrieking with rage to have discovered that not only had his vial of sleeping powders been dashed to bits, but that the cloud of dust it had become had wafted across and half-hidden the globe where it lay near the table.

Miles was hanging out over the balcony, waving at the globe and shouting spells. The globe seemed to shake and vibrate and to turn once about its circumference, inching toward where Jonathan stood next to the snoring Squire. Selznak shouted spells of his own, and the globe teetered the other way. Then it spun around like a top for a bit, and once again crept toward Jonathan.

Storming across the room and yanking a big leather bellows from its hook on the wall, Selznak began puffing jets of wind at the powder that hung about the globe. Clouds of it whirled and rose, and the stuff thinned and thinned and lost itself, finally, in the air. The globe began to pick up speed and to roll in earnest toward Jonathan, who sprang toward it, only to be slammed on the forehead with the end of the bellows and find himself sitting on the floor. Selznak scooped up the globe and scurried back to his potions.

A trickle of blood ran down across Jonathan’s brow and into his eyes. He wiped at it with the sleeve of his coat. When more dripped down he wiped at it again, then pulled his bandana from his pocket and tied it around the cut.

Selznak stood chortling over the globe. It seemed quite likely to Jonathan that the Dwarf would make use of the thing – would open a magical door and step through it and leave the lot of them behind. In fact, he half-hoped that such would be the case. Selznak, apparently, hadn’t any such plan. Instead, he set about casting spells at Miles, who himself was busy on the balcony above.

Suddenly a shouting and a tumult in the hallway was followed by a furious barking on the stairs. Gump and Bufo raced in followed by Professor Wurzle and Ahab – all of them bent upon throwing themselves into the fray. There wasn’t, however, much of a fray. Selznak was furiously mixing dried leaves and smoking powders and was shouting chants and wailing. Meanwhile Miles dumped shimmering glitter off the balcony, and the stuff floated down around the Dwarf, who began to sneeze uncontrollably. Then, while Jonathan and his companions watched in wonder, the little twirls of hair over each of the Dwarf’s ears fell out onto the ground, leaving him as bald as the Lumbog globe. Selznak ran across the room and pulled his hat from its hook, smashing it over his head in a gesture of wild vanity. Bufo laughed out loud to see the Dwarf embarrassed so, and Selznak, in response, threw a handful of fireballs at him, one of which set Bufo’s shirt afire. Gump and the Professor raced over and pounded it out.

It was then that Gump caught sight of Zippo’s mechanical fish, shoved back into a far corner of the laboratory. ‘Look!’ he shouted, pointing at it. Jonathan wasn’t sure what it was that Gump intended, but Bufo apparently hadn’t any doubts, for he followed Gump around behind it, and the two of them tugged levers and yanked cranks. The mechanical fish began rocking and whistling and rotating back and forth on its moorings.

A flood of helium buds poured forth – thousands and thousands of them – each one floating toward the ceiling. One by one they began to burst, like popcorn just heating up, and then in a rush of exotic color, dozens, then scores, then hundreds blossomed – giant iris and roses and magnolia blossoms and weird purple antherium the size of buckets. New buds poured from the mouth of the machine. Gump and Bufo were highly satisfied with their achievement, but Miles, swatting at the thickening mass of airborne flowers, wasn’t half so thrilled. The flying flowers began to crowd in upon him there on his balcony, and within a minute and a half of the fish having set in, Miles was entirely obscured by the blooms. Jonathan could hear him shouting there, although his shouts were almost drowned out by Selznak’s laughter. He couldn’t, however, see Miles at all. He couldn’t even see the balcony.