The girl's shoulders drooped a little. As she turned to go she addressed the atmosphere: "Some —people—have—funny—ideas—of a good—time!"
Nash grinned and lugged the account book and money up to the smallest bedroom, which he had chosen for himself.
He had to sit on the floor and work by candlelight. He missed his pipe; the chatter of the women wafted up through the boards; once the bong of the monastery bells startled him. But those distractions were minor— Clink, clink, clink, $140, $160, $180, $200, $220— $16, 360 in double eagles—
$412, 905. 45, checked and rechecked, and not counting a small pile of foreign coins and the gold plate.
How much should he keep for himself? That to Nash was a ticklish question whose contemplation made him a little uneasy. Arslan's own title to the money might be bad; Arslan might be a scoundrel; still Nash wished he could forget how unreservedly the scoundrel had trusted him. He admitted, a little grudgingly, that the rescue of these poor girls took precedence over Arslan's getting every cent returned or accounted for. It was still an impossibly tangled legal and moral question, especially if Arslan Bey's little robber state had been extinguished by the Aryan armies—
Hell, take ten percent, give the rest to the gals, and forget about it. If he failed to get the Shamir on his next try, he would pay off his debts, salt the rest away in a safe place—if the astral plane had such a thing—and keep very quiet about his nest egg. Not for him the lavishness of a gentleman performing the social duty of conspicuous waste."Friends" would swarm around begging a little loan, and Nash would be caught between his soft-heartedness and his financial meticulousness, with compliance and refusal both distressing.
He chuckled a little at himself: he should have imagined, instead of a dashing cavalier, one of those thrifty Puritans to whom financial gain was the outward visible sign of inward spiritual grace.
Now for the books: Capital Ace; Interest & Discount; Profit & Loss; Surplus & Deficit—
Until his door creaked open Nash did not realize that he had fallen asleep in an approximation of the lotus posture of Yoga. He shook the sleep out of his eyes. One of the candles had burned out; the light of the other showed one of the girls in the doorway, big-eyed and wrapped in a monk's blanket.
"Prosper! There's a man in the house!"
"Huh?"
"A man! Burglar! On the back stairs—"
Nash jumped up and went hunting with his sword. His quarry obligingly gave himself away by tripping over his own feet, and Nash chased him downstairs, through the main halls, and out a window, scaring the wits out of the girls sleeping on the ground floor. He got close enough to see that the intruder was no ragged burglar, but a bejeweled late-Medieval dandy.
Two hours later he was aroused again; this time a Casanova was climbing the ivy. Nash stole up to the roof, and as the man's head came over the wall Prosper whacked it with the flat of his blade. The man dropped twenty feet with a crash, picked himself out of the shrubbery, and limped off shrilling maledictions.
There were no more disturbances that night, but next morning after breakfast Nash set out for the monastery with one of Arslan's gold dinner plates under his coat.
In the yard he passed Alicia bending over a washtub. The girl was scrubbing vigorously with a blanket tied around her against the cold, and was smoking a corncob pipe.
At his muttered "Good lord," she looked up.
"Morning, Prosper, 'Smatter, 'fraid I'll shock our monastic friends? I've got to; my only clothes are in the wash."
"No; you're O. K. That pipe just made me wonder if you were created in the Kentucky mountains."
"Nope; I smoke a pipe when I happen to feel like smoking a pipe."
At Nash's request, Brother Benedict took him to see the abbot. Nash began by presenting the plate; the abbot was duly grateful, and said it would be a great thing for the poor of Staten Island.
Then Nash explained his troubles with amorous natives. He asked: "Don't you boys do a lot of walking around at night, by way of penance or something?"
"That is true."
"Well, I was wondering if you couldn't assign a couple of penancers each night to patrol around my castle with good, thick clubs."
"Why—that is a very startling idea. But—now that I think of it, there is something to be said for it. Of course your ladies must not make any... ahem... must comport themselves in a seemly manner."
"They'll behave all right, all right, if I have to tan their... if I have to apply corporal chastisement. Now maybe you could give me some advice on how to get them home safe. I don't want the local banditti to cut their throats as soon as they leave—"
The abbot showed a flash of unmonkish local pride: "It is nothing like as bad as that, M. de Nêche. Of course there are wicked men everywhere, but Staten Island has been reasonably safe since Duke Alessandro took hold. Jersey City is another matter, but I suppose your ladies can avoid it. Why not have them write their husbands and friends to come and get them? The mails run, except in the Manhattan war zone."
"Most of 'em come from Manhattan," objected Nash.
"Still, many of those would have friends in other parts."
"I'll try it. Now could you recommend a jeweler?"
The abbot gave him the name of Arnold Earnshaw Nathan, in St. George. Nash thought of asking for the whereabouts of Merlin Apollonius Stark, but decided that the good monks would probably suspect him of dealings with the Devil.
Nash set the girls to writing letters, and went down to St. George. Arnold Earnshaw Nathan was a plainly dressed man, older than most astralites, who hung out in a shop full of elaborate clocks, all ticking like mad. Nathan agreed to come up to the castle that afternoon to weigh and assay the odds and ends of the sultan's hoard. As he was agreeing, the clocks all struck eleven with a fearful jankle, and in the fancier ones all sorts of wonderful acts took place. Besides the usual cuckoos, there were clocks in which tiny figures appeared and went through acrobatic stunts, a house-shaped clock that appeared to catch fire until a set of toy firemen whirred into action and put the fire out, and so on.
On his way back, Nash passed a shop displaying weapons of all sorts: guns, swords, daggers. He went in and asked to see the most modern pistols in stock. These turned out to be a line of double-action revolvers, in. 32,. 38 and. 44 calibers.
"You wouldn't have a Colt. 45 automatic, service model?" asked Nash."If I ever have to shoot somebody, I don't want to just irritate him."
"Automatics? No. Nobody uses them."
"That's funny. You know what an automatic pistol is?"
"Sure, sure. No good; jam all the time."
"Where I come from they don't. Why is that?"
"You try to make one, you see. Too many little sliding parts and springs. Can't file them accurately enough."
"You mean your guns are all handmade?"
"Naturally. Make lots of them myself."
Nash ordered the merchant's whole stock of. 32s and. 38s for the girls, and a. 44 for himself. The merchant beamed, and asked to see Nash's license. It was then that Nash learned that Staten Island had a Sullivan law.
He sighed and set out for the county courthouse to get his licenses. All went well until the license clerk asked his reason for wanting the arsenal.
"Well," explained Nash, "my protégées recently came into some money, and they'll want some protection on their—"
"Money? Money? Ah, signor, da collect' of revenue, he wantsa to see you! Come with me!" The clerk bounced up and dragged Nash into the collector's office.
When Nash told the assistant collector of revenue that he had just arrived in Staten Island, and intended to leave in a few days, the official pursed his lips and said: "Then you will be liable for only a few taxes, my friend. Import tax, export tax, residence tax, transit tax, personal property tax, income tax. That'sa all. Here are your formsa."