“Cut out the clowning,” Carol said. “You are forcing it too much. You’re not very good at it.”
“I know it,” Maxwell said, “but I always try.”
They came to the door and started down the long flight of wide, curving stone stairs which led down to the roadway.
“Professor Maxwell!” cried a voice.
Maxwell turned. Coming down the stairs was Churchill.
“Just a moment, Maxwell, if you please,” he said.
“Yes, what is it, Churchill?”
“A word. Alone, if the lady doesn’t mind.”
“I’ll wait for you at the road,” Carol said to Maxwell. “Don’t bother,” Maxwell said. “I’ll settle him real fast.”
“No,” said Carol, “I’ll wait. I don’t want any trouble.”
Maxwell waited while Churchill came swiftly down the stairs. The man was slightly out of breath and he reached out a hand to grab Maxwell by the arm.
“I’ve been trying to get to you all evening long,” he said, “but you were always with a crowd.”
“What is it that you want?” Maxwell asked him sharply.
“The Wheeler,” Churchill said. “You must pay no attention to him. He doesn’t know our ways. I didn’t know what he intended to do. In fact, I told him not to.”
“You mean you knew the Wheeler might be laying for me?”
“I told him not to,” Churchill protested. “I told him to leave you alone. I’m very sorry, Professor Maxwell. Believe me, I did my very best.”
Maxwell’s hand shot out and grabbed Churchill by the shirt front, twisting the fabric and pulling the man close to him.
“So you’re the Wheeler’s man!” he shouted. “You’re fronting for him. It was you who made the offer for the Artifact and you made it for the Wheeler.”
“What I did,” declared Churchill angrily, “was my own business. I make my living representing people.”
“The Wheeler isn’t people,” Maxwell said. “God knows what a Wheeler is. A hive full of insects, for one thing. What else we do not know.”
“He has his rights,” said Churchill. “He’s entitled to do business.”
“And you’re entitled to help him,” Maxwell said. “Entitled to take his wages. But be careful how you earn them. And don’t get in my way.”
He straightened his arm and flung Churchill from him. The man staggered, lost his balance, fell and rolled down several steps before he could catch himself. He lay there, sprawled, not trying to get up.
“By rights,” said Maxwell, “I should have thrown you down the stairs and broken your filthy neck.”
He glanced up toward the house and saw that a small crowd of people had collected at the door and were staring down at him. Staring and muttering among themselves.
He turned on his heel and went stalking down the stairs.
At the bottom Carol was clinging desperately to a frantic cat.
“I thought he was going to get away and go up there and tear that man to pieces,” she gasped.
She looked at Maxwell with disgust written on her face.
“Can’t you get along with anyone?” she asked.
Maxwell got off the roadway at the point where it crossed the mouth of Hound Dog Hollow and stood for a moment, staring at the rocky cliffs and bold headlands of the autumn bluffs. A short distance up the hollow, he caught a glimpse, through the red and yellow of the tinted leaves, of the bare rock face of Cat Den Point and up there, high against the sky, standing just back of the most prominent of the headlands, he knew he’d find the castle of the goblins, with one O’Toole in residence. And somewhere in that wilderness lay the mossy bridge that served as a den for trolls.
It was still early in the morning, since he had started out well before the dawn. A frosty dew lay upon the grass and twinkled on clumps of weeds the sun had not yet found. The air had a winy flavor to it and the sky was so faint and delicate a blue that it seemed to have no color and over all of it, over the entire landscape, hung a sense of strange expectancy.
Maxwell walked across the high-arched foot bridge that spanned the double roadway and on the other side he found a path that led him up the hollow.
The trees closed in around him and he walked through a fairy land that held its breath. He found himself moving slowly and very carefully so that no quick movement or noise would break the forest hush. Leaves came planing down from the canopy above, fluttering wings of color falling gently to earth. Ahead of him a mouse ran, humping in its haste, moving through and over the fallen leaves, but making scarcely a rustle in its fleeing. Far up the hollow a bluejay screeched, but among the trees the screech was muted and robbed of its customary harshness.
The path forked, with the left-hand fork continuing up the hollow, while the right-hand fork angled up the bluff. Maxwell took the right-hand path. Ahead of him lay a long and wearying climb, but he would take it easy and stop to rest at frequent intervals. It would be a shame on a day like this, he told himself, not to stop to rest as often as he could, begrudging the time that eventually would take him out of this place of color and of silence.
The path was steep, with many turnings to dodge the massive boulders crouched upon the ground, anchored in the soil, gray-bearded with their crops of lichens. The tree trunks crowded close, the rough, dark bark of ancient oak, the satin whiteness of the birches, showing little tan blotches where the thin bark had peeled off but still clung, fluttering in the wind. In the cluttered trash of the surface rose the fat red pyramid of the jack-in-the-pulpit fruit, the shriveled hood drooping like a tittered purple robe.
Maxwell climbed slowly, saving his breath, stopping often to look around, to soak in the feel of autumn that lay all about. He reached, finally, the fairy green where Churchill’s flier, with himself as passenger, had come crashing down under the spell of the trolls’ enchantment. Just up the hill a ways lay the goblin castle.
He stood for a moment on the green, resting, then took up the climb again. Dobbin, or another horse very similar to him, was cropping at the scanty grass which grew in ragged bunches in a pole-fenced pasture. A few doves fluttered about the castle’s turrets, but there were no other signs of life.
Sudden shouts shattered the morning’s peace and out of the open castle gate came a gang of trolls, moving rapidly and in curious formation. They were in three lines and each line had a rope across its shoulders, exactly, Maxwell told himself, like the old painting he had seen of the Volga boatmen. They charged out onto the drawbridge and now Maxwell could see that the three ropes were attached to a block of hewn stone which bounced along behind them, raising a hollow, booming racket when it hit the drawbridge.
Old Dobbin was neighing wildly, kicking up his heels and galloping madly around the inside perimeter of the fence.
The trolls, their fangs gleaming against the brown, wrinkled viciousness of their faces, their roached hair seeming to bristle more stiffly than was the usual case, came pounding down the path, with the massive stone bouncing along behind them, raising puffs of dust as it gouged into the ground.
Boiling out of the gate behind them came a cloud of goblins, armed with clubs, with hoes, with pitchforks, apparently with anything they could lay their hands upon.
Maxwell leaped out of the path as the trolls bore down upon him. They were running silently and with vast determination, their weight bent against the ropes, while the goblin horde pursued them with wild war whoops and shrieks. In the forefront of the goblin band, Mr. O’Toole ran heavily, his face and neck violet with his anger, a two-by-four brandished in his fist.
At the point where Maxwell had leaped out of the way, the path took a sudden dip, toboganning downward in a rocky slide to the fairy green. At the top of the dip the block of stone took a mighty leap as its forward edge struck a rocky ledge. The ropes hung slack and the block came down and bounced and then, with the ropes flying, started pinwheeling down the hill.