"Paraldine, take a spell. Three copies, marked for cues:
" 'I do hereby adjure thee, Watch, by Uriel, Seraph, Ablati, and Agla, that when thou dost enter any enchanted zone wherein the time rate is slowed, the time rate of him who carries thee shall be accelerated even as thy hour-hand shall be accelerated. I command thee in the names of Cronus, Tempus, and Wyrd, that the same acceleration shall apply to the clothes and effects of him who carries thee, and his companions and conveyance. Be faithful to thy trust in the name of Jod, Metraton, by the virtue of the heavens, the stars, the angels, the planets, and the stones; Adon, Schadai, Zeboth; Eloi, Ha, Jo Theos—' "
It went on like this for a whole page. Stark rapidly dictated four more spells; one to immobilize Tukiphat, and one each on a rope, a seal, and a stick of sealing wax wherewith to bind him.
The bell rang, announcing Muzio Sforza D'Ame-lio, who turned out to be a big burly fellow in colorful Fifteenth-Century costume and a ready smile. Stark showed them into a small private room and left them to confer.
When he had heard Nash's proposal, d'Amelio said: "Soundsa like a fina job! I don' know if a poor littla fella lika me woulda be mucha help, but I lika to try!"
He had charm. When Nash offered him five hundred down and five hundred when the job was finished he jumped at it so quickly that Nash mentally kicked himself for not making a lower offer. Nash was not altogether satisfied with such an impromptu arrangement, but the ten days allowed him by Bechard were running short.
Paraldine had meanwhile typed all the spells in triplicate. Stark took his three visitors into the spell room, which was simply a big, dark, rather bare room with magical devices stacked here and there.
Instead of drawing pentacles on the floor, Stark went over to a pile of circular pieces of linoleum, three to four feet in diameter, on which, the magical diagrams were already drawn. He tossed four of these on the floor, and put Nash and Alicia in the centers of two of them.
The magus lit a fire in a tripod, passed the watch quickly through the flame, blew on it, and sprinkled it with a pinch of earth and a few drops of water. Then he wiped it and put it in the middle of the center pentacle. He took his position on the remaining one and began reading the spell. Nash and Alicia, according to instructions, chimed in with choruses at certain points, meanwhile turning round and round like dervishes. Nash became dizzy and almost reeled out of his circle before a snap of Stark's fingers warned him to control his body.
There were similar performances for the other articles."Now," said Stark, "we'll have a little rehearsal of the binding of Tukiphat. Miss Woodson will read the initial fixation. Muzio, being the biggest, will handle the rope, and de Nêche the seal. You'll have to work fast, because that initial fixation won't hold Tuky much more than a minute."
They went to work. With the fixation spell the magician's limbs became rigid. D'Amelio looped the rope around him as he had been instructed. Nash lit one of the oversized matches he had been given, melted a gob of wax onto the crossing of the rope ends, and gave it a poke with the seal, which had a hexagram with the Greek letters alpha and omega and the Hebrew letters jod, vau, and two he's.
"Swell!" said Stark."Now if you'll just break this seal, de Nêche—"
"No, damn it, it worked on me too! That's how I know you did it right."
"I theenk it woulda be fun to leava him there, eh, Chevalier?" grinned d'Amelio.
"Hi!" cried Stark in alarm."You can't treat a professional man that way!"
Nash took his time about breaking the seal, commenting : "Seems to me, Merlin, old mage, that we put as much work into this preparation as you did, and we don't get paid for it."
"True. But you paid me, not for what I did, but for knowing how to do it! Thanks. Now you three run along, collect your beasties, and lead them down to Pier 9. You'll find a boat there to take you to Manhattan. Paraldine's already contacted the skipper; name of Jones. No extra charge, de Nêche, if that's what you're looking worried about."
The little steam launch lay moored to Pier 9; a man in a brass-buttoned coat and sideburns leaned against the stack chewing tobacco. He took in the party and said: "Ahoy, be you the passengers for Manhattan? Cap'n Jones. Hi, you ain't gonna take those animules aboard?"
"Oh, signor captain!" said d'Amelio."Thosa littla creaturesa, they would not hurt a fly!"
"Mebbe not, but I ain't no fly! Oh, well, belay 'em to the quatterdeck. Say, Mr. de Nêche, ain't I seen you somewheres?"
"Might," said Nash."Is your name... uh... Ahab Dana Jones?"
"Sure thing! I remember now! You was the man we horned in on when he was fighting the Saracens. Remember the hoss you guv me? That furnished the down payment on this little ship. Cast off, Walter."
The launch wheezed northward in the deepening gloom of an overcast November evening. Smiley and Kulu huddled together as far from the water as they could get.
The skipper spat tobacco juice with carefully calculated trajectory, and said: "Don't get many passengers for Manhattan; everybody that can, wants to get away. Say, Mr. de Nêche, seems to me I heard your name somewheres else. Ain't you the one the Manhattan Government in Exile is lookin' for to hang for desertion?"
Nash swallowed and answered: "I didn't know they'd gone that far. What happened?"
"You and that fella—Average?"
"Averoff?" suggested Nash.
"Yeah. Heh, heh, I heard the hull yarn. They say you gave this here cowboy a message to a Sergeant Berl you was supposed to take yourself, and then you vamoosed. Is that right?"
"More or less. I had good reasons, though."
"Ain't sayin' you didn't. All I know is what I heard."
"What else did you hear?" Nash felt a peculiar tightness around his throat as if the noose were already tightening. He must have hung up a record for making enemies during his short stay.
"It was a queer thing. This cowboy, Averoff, talks with a New York accent, and don't make no difference between 'Berl' and 'Boyle'; calls 'em both 'buh-eel. ' So when he found a Sergeant Boyle he thought he had Sergeant Berl, and guv him the message, which was an order to disarm the Lenin regiment. But Sergeant Boyle's brigade was on the wrong end of the front, and before he could do anything the Lenins had mutinied. I just heard today the Arries finally took City Hall and shot all the Lenins. Serves 'em right, heh, heh, "
Chapter XIV.
"HALT! WER DA?" The command rang out in a peculiarly tense, high bark, as if the speaker had screwed himself up to such a nervous pitch that he was on the verge of exploding. But this was, as Nash came to learn, merely the ordinary tone used by Aryans on military duty. This particular Aryan, a cross-gartered barbarian with his hair in long yellow braids, was covering them with a rifle aimed from the hip.
Nash responded: "Just us," and did some quick thinking. When they had been stopped by a squad of Roman legionnaires, Muzio Sforza d'Amelio had talked them loose with a swift hand-Waving patter of Italian. That might not work so well with this pseudo-Alaric.
As they advanced into the small circle of light around the sentry, the latter snapped: "Shpeak Aryan, sub-man!"
"I only know about ten words—" apologized Nash.
"You know da regulation. All sub-men must learn Aryan in vun veek or be executed. Vot are dese! Who gave you permission to lead dancherous animals around da streets?"
D'Amelio's hands began to flutter in a way that Nash had learned to interpret as a warming up for articulate speech. The condottiere said: "Theesa poor littla pussy cat anda monk', your high command order' for their blood. We take them."