"A place," Ghost explained, "where we won't be seen. But where the food is edible and the whiskey's cheap. Oop made a point of that."
They finally reached the place, walking down an iron staircase to reach the basement level. Maxwell pushed open the door. The interior was dim. From somewhere in the back came the smell of cooking.
"They serve family style here," said Ghost. "Plank it down upon the table and everyone helps himself. Oop is delighted with that way of serving."
Oop's massive figure moved out from one of the tables in the rear. He waved an arm at them. There were, Maxwell saw, only a half dozen or so other people in the place.
"Over here!" yelled Oop. "Someone for you to meet."
Followed by Ghost, Maxwell made his way across the room. From the table, Carol's face looked up at him. And another face, a bearded, shadowed face-the face of someone that Maxwell felt he should remember.
"Our guest tonight," said Oop. "Master William Shakespeare."
Shakespeare got up and held out his hand to Maxwell. A white-toothed smile flashed above the beard.
"I deem me fortunate," he said, "to have fallen in with such rough and rowdy fellows."
"The Bard is thinking of staying here," said Oop. "Of settling down among us."
"Nay, not the Bard," said Shakespeare. "I will not have you call me it. I be no more than an honest butcher and a dealer in the wool."
"A mere slip of the tongue," Oop assured him. "We have grown so accustomed."
"Aye, aye, I know," said Shakespeare. "One mistake treads hard upon the footsteps of the one it follows."
"But stay here," said Maxwell. He shot a swift glance at Oop. "Does Harlow know he's here?"
"I think not," said Oop. "We took some pains he wouldn't."
"I slipped the leash," said Shakespeare, grinning, pleased with himself. "But with assistance, for which acknowledge gratitude."
"Assistance," said Maxwell. "I just bet there was. Will you clowns ever learn."
"Pete, don't carry on," said Carol. "I think it very noble of Oop. Here was this poor fellow from another time and all he wanted was to see how the people lived and-"
"Let's sit down," said Ghost to Maxwell. "You have the look of a man who could stand a good stiff drink."
Maxwell sat down, next to Shakespeare, Ghost taking the chair on the other side of him. Oop picked up a bottle and handed it across the table to him.
"Go ahead," he urged. "Don't stand on ceremony. Don't bother with a glass. We're informal here."
Maxwell tilted the bottle to his mouth and let it gurgle. Shakespeare watched him with admiration. When he took it down, Shakespeare said, "I cannot but admire your fortitude. I essayed a drink of it and it fair to shriveled me."
"After a time you get used to it," said Maxwell.
"But this ale," said Shakespeare, touching with a finger a half-filled bottle of beer. "Now, there is stuff soft to the palate and pleasing to the stomach."
Sylvester wormed his way behind Shakespeare's chair, squeezed in beside Maxwell and laid his head in Maxwell's lap. Maxwell scratched behind his ears.
"Is that cat bothering you again?" asked Carol.
"Sylvester and I are comrades," Maxwell told her. "We've been through wars together. We took on the Wheeler last night, you must remember, and we vanquished him."
"You bear a cheerful countenance," Shakespeare said to Maxwell. "I would presume that the business you have been about, and which had detained you until now, has gone favorably."
"The business did not go at all," said Maxwell. "The only reason I have a cheerful countenance is because I am in such good company."
"You mean Harlow turned you down!" exploded Oop. "That he wouldn't give you a day or two of time."
"There was nothing else for him to do," Maxwell explained. "He's already been paid and the Wheeler carts off the Artifact tomorrow."
"We have the means," Oop declared darkly, "to make him change his mind."
"Not any longer," said Maxwell. "He can't pull out now. The deal is done. He won't give back the money, he won't break his word. And if what you have in mind is what I think it is, all he needs to do is call off the lecture and refund the money for the tickets."
"I suppose you're right," Oop agreed. "We hadn't known the deal had gone so far. We figured we might pick up a little bargaining strength."
"You did the best you could," said Maxwell, "and I thank you for it."
"We had figured," said Oop, "that if we could buy a day or two, then all of us could go marching up the hill and bust in on Arnold and explain things to him by hand. But it's all over now, I guess-so have another drink and pass it over to me."
Maxwell had another drink and passed the bottle to him. Shakespeare finished off his beer and thumped the bottle back onto the table. Carol took the bottle from Oop and poured a couple of inches into her glass.
"I don't care how the rest of you conduct yourselves," she said. "I will not go utterly barbaric. I insist on drinking from a glass."
"Beer!" yelled Oop. "More beer for our distinguished guest."
"I thank you, sir," said Shakespeare.
"How did you ever find this dump?" asked Maxwell. "I know," said Oop, "many of the backwaters of this campus."
"It was exactly what we wanted," said Ghost. "Time will be beating the bushes for our friend. Did Harlow tell you he had disappeared?"
"No," said Maxwell, "but he seemed somewhat on edge. He mentioned that he was worried, but you couldn't tell it on him. He's the kind who can sit on the edge of an exploding volcano and never turn a hair."
"How about the newsmen?" Maxwell asked. "Still covering the shack?"
Oop shook his head. "But they'll be back. We'll have to find some other place for you to bunk."
"I suppose I might as well face them," Maxwell said.
"The story will have to be told someday."
"They'll tear you apart," warned Carol. "And Oop tells me you are without a job and Longfellow's sore at you. You can't stand bad publicity right now."
"None of it really matters," Maxwell told her. "The only problem is how much of it I should tell them."
"All of it," said Oop. "Tear the thing wide open. Let the galaxy know exactly what was lost."
"No," said Maxwell. "Harlow is my friend. I can't do anything to hurt him."
A waiter brought a bottle of beer and put it down.
"One bottle!" raged Oop. "What do you mean, one bottle? Go back and get an armload of it. Our friend here has a dry on."
"You didn't say," the waiter said. "How was I to know?" He shuffled off to gather up more beer.
"Your hospitality," said Shakespeare, "is beyond reproach. But I fear I am intruding in a time of trouble."
"Trouble, yes," Ghost told him. "But you are not intruding. We are glad to have you."
"What was this Oop said about your staying here?" asked Maxwell. "About your settling down."
"My teeth are bad," said Shakespeare. "They hang loosely in the jaw and at times pain exceedingly. I have intelligence that hereabout are marvelous mechanics who can extract them with no pain and fabricate a set to replace the ones I have."
"That can be done, indeed," said Ghost.
"I left at home," said Shakespeare, "a wife with a nagging tongue and I would be rather loath to return to her. Likewise, the ale that you call beer is wondrous above any I have drunk and I hear tell that you have arrived at understanding with goblins and with fairies, which is a marvelous thing. And to sit at meat with a ghost is past all understanding, although one has the feeling here he must dig close at the root of truth."