Dick's involuntary motion was checked. "Jones?" said the stocky man quietly, with the stick he held resting lightly on Dick's arm. His voice was deep but breathy, with the suspicion of a lisp. His face was an unhealthy paper-gray, his nose beaked, his mouth firm and thin.
"What?" said Dick. "Yes, but -- "
"My name is Ruell. Ruell. Take my advice -- let him go. He would have done it to you."
The man's dark, wet head had dropped a little farther forward. The muscles of his back quivered and seemed about to relax. Dick had a sudden incongruous vision of another body falling, leaning head downward into the bright grass.
His mouth was dry. "Get out of my way!" he said hoarsely. He flung his stick away, careless of where it went, and kneeled on the brink with one foot precariously braced against the side of the entrance. He got his hands around Keel's wet, cold, wrist, and pulled.
A giant's hand was tugging Keel the other way. Dick went down on one side, still hanging on. He was sliding toward the edge, helplessly; the lights in the ceiling were a bewildering glare.
Arms went around his waist. There was a clatter of sticks on the metal, voices babbling; another giant's hand began to pull him backward. Dick's arms threatened to come, out of their sockets; he hung on grimly. Keel's arm and lolling head came reluctantly over the brink, then the other hand, feebly groping; then the rest of him.
It was not Keel's friend, as Dick had imagined, who had held him by the waist, but the gargoyle, Frankie. The friend, a man with a dark forelock and a sullen lip, was looking on from the background. Rolling to his feet, Frankie bent over Keel, then straddled him and-began to push rhythmically at his ribs. A little water dribbled out of Keel's mouth; he stirred. "He be arright," said Frankie cheerfully. "If you wait for me jus' a little minute now, Misser Jones, I take you to you' rooms."
The stocky man (Ruell? Why was that name, familiar?) had bent to retrieve his swagger stick and was delicately dusting his hands. He must have been the third man, then, on the human chain that had dragged Keel to safety. "I'll take him," he said, with a stiff little bow to Dick. "If the mister doesn't object. What suke?"
"Number H 103 -- in the rosewood court aroun' by the Old Fountain."
"I know where it is. Come along then, Mister Jones; you've done quite all you can do here."
As they passed, the sullen young man made a sudden face and gesture: "Jerry won't forget you!"
"Nor will he," murmured Ruell, strolling on at Dick's elbow. "You made a mistake; Keel is not a grateful man, he's too vain. I now warn you again, and then I'll drop the subject: you had better kill that man if you can, the first chance you get."
They were crossing a huge, paved courtyard, glassed in fifty feet above, with beds of geometrically planted geraniums and phlox, dogwood, asters, delphiniums, tulips. Dick felt bewildered and weak from reaction; he said, "Why did you help me pull him out, then?"
"It was your choice," said Ruell, indifferently. "On your left," he went on, "the Winton Number One." He was pointing to a hideous object on a flagstone dais, a four-wheeled golden carriage with lucite wheels and an embroidered canopy over the open seat. Every inch of surface was chased, engraved, jeweled, elaborately ornamented. "One of the first automobiles sold in the United States," Ruell said. "A reconstruction, however -- historically valueless, but the only one of its kind." He pointed again. "On your right, an early Packard -- the first with a wheel instead of a tiller. Beyond that, of , course, is the Stanley Steamer."
"Is that what the Boss collects?" Dick asked. "Autos?" "Ha!" said Ruell, explosively. His nose twitched and his eyebrows went up. "Ha, ha! Oh, ha, ha, ha, ha! Ah, my dear boy -- " He hugged himself with one arm, with the other clapped Dick on the shoulder.
Dick moved away. "What's so funny?"
"Now here," said Ruell, recovering instantly, "we have the famous Old Fountain." It was a waist-high flagstone pool, twenty feet across, with a thin jet of water in the middle. "The eel-like fish," said Ruell, "are lampreys. Quite unpleasant -- they cling to their prey with that toothed sucker, then rasp a hole in it with their tongues, which also have teeth. A Roman of the time of Augustus kept lampreys in his fishpond, and threw slaves to them for trivial offenses. Vedius Pollio was his name; that was twenty-one centuries ago. Plus $a change, plus c'est la meme chose."
Dick stopped and turned to face him. "My rooms can't be far from here," he said. "I imagine I can find them myself. Goood-bye."
Ruell stopped him, looking contrite. "My dear boy, I didn't mean any offense. I laughed, impolitely, at your ignorance. You asked if the Boss collects cars -- well, I can't just at the moment think of anything the Boss does not collect. He collects collections. He collects interminably and insatiably. This whole mountain, in fact," he said persuasively, taking Dick's arm again, "is little more than a thin shell, over a bottomless pit of the Boss's collections. Now. Your suite is just here."
Dick allowed himself to be led again, thinking it the quickest way to get rid of the man. There was something he profoundly disliked and distrusted about him; perhaps it had something to do with the nagging familiarity of the name Ruell -- He stopped suddenly, feeling for the thin envelope he had stuffed into his breast pocket. It was still there.
"Yes?" said Ruell, alertly. "Have you something for me?"
"If you're the man my father -- I mean, if your name is -- "
"Leon Ruell; of course; I thought you knew. But don't let's talk here -- one moment" He leaned, opened a carved rosewood door, urged Dick inside.
The ceilings were immensely high, ending in peaked, prismed skylights from which a multicolored radiance spilled down the walls. The walls to a level above Dick's head were of carved rosewood; the rest was blue plaster. From beyond a doorway came the sound of hammering: the rooms had a musty, untenanted air.
"You'll be comfortable enough here," said Ruell, sniffing disparagingly, "for a day or so, until we can find you more suitable quarters. Now, then, if you please." He held out his hand; Dick put the envelope in it.
Ruell, with an apologetic nod, turned half away, slit the envelope with his thumbnail, opened a sheet of flimsy paper and read it slowly. When he was done, he creased the paper thoughtfully once, twice, and began to eat it. He smiled at Dick's astonishment. "Rice paper," he said, swallowing. "Haven't you ever used that trick? Well, you will, you will."
The hammering had stopped. From the other room came the gargoyle, Frankie, dressed in a blue overall like a show dog and carrying a box of carpenter's tools. He nodded cheerfully to Dick. "We fix you up, one, two, three, Misser Jones." He went out; there was a brief colloquy at the door, and he came in again, dressed in a yellow coverall and carrying a painter's kit.
Dick stared at him with his jaw unhinged. "All done pretty quick, Misser Jones," said Frankie, grinning happily; he disappeared into the other room.
With a muttered exclamation, Dick followed to the doorway. A section of the paneling in the inner room had been removed and replaced with raw, newly carved wood. Frankie was taping sheets of masking paper around it, with his cans of stain and shellac, his brushes and spray gun neatly laid out around him. His coverall was definitely yellow, an unequivocal, almost offensive yellow, and it was a different garment entirely from the blue one he had worn a moment ago.
Ruell was at his elbow, looking amused. Remembering the exchange at the door, Dick said, "There are two of them -- is that it? Are they twins?"
Ruell went off into one of his choked explosions of laughter. "Are there two!" he repeated. "Twins!"