Tolcet pointed again at the mirror, and his reflection pointed its finger straight back at Halsa and Onion. Tolcet said, “Here they are in front of you! Ha! Do you know them? Here are the wizards of Perfil!”
Neil Gaiman’s most recent novel, the international bestseller The Graveyard Book, won the prestigious Newbery Medal, given to great works of children’s literature. Other novels include American Gods, Coraline, Neverwhere, and Anansi Boys, among many others. In addition to his novel-writing, Gaiman is also the writer of the popular Sandman comic book series, and his books Coraline and Stardust were recently made into feature films. Gaiman’s short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including my own The Living Dead, By Blood We Live, and The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Most of his short work has been collected in the volumes Smoke and Mirrors, Fragile Things, and M is for Magic. His latest book is a hardcover edition of his poem, Instructions, illustrated by Charles Vess.
Most Americans have probably heard someone say, “If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you,” referring to New York’s Brooklyn Bridge. It’s just taken for granted that handing over your money to a con man who offers to “sell” you such a famous landmark would be the ultimate example of gullibility. Believe it or not though, this old cliche is based on a real scam that was perpetrated over and over again on naive immigrants whose heads were filled with exaggerated notions of America as a land of opportunity. Con artists would memorize the routes of the beat cops and then set up signs saying “Bridge for sale” when they knew the police would be out of sight. Police repeatedly had to evict people who had been swindled and were attempting to charge tolls for crossing “their” bridge. As newcomers to the city gradually become more sophisticated, the con died away, but lived on in movies such as Every Day’s a Holiday and even in a Bugs Bunny cartoon (“Bowery Bugs”).
Our next tale, about a gentleman’s club for con artists, provides a new twist on this old idea, albeit one involving a much grander bridge and a much grander swindle.
How to Sell the Ponti Bridge
Neil Gaiman
My favorite rogues’ club is the oldest and still the most exclusive in all the Seven Worlds. It was formed by a loose association of rogues, cheats, scoundrels, and confidence men almost seventy thousand years ago. It has been copied many times in many places (there was one started quite recently, within the last five hundred years at any rate, in the City of London), but none of the other clubs matches the original Rogues’ Club, in the city of Lost Carnadine, for atmosphere. No other club has quite so select a membership.
And the membership of the Lost Carnadine Rogues’ Club is particularly select. You will understand the kind of person who makes it to membership if I tell you that I myself have seen, walking or sitting or eating or talking, in its many rooms, such notables as Daraxius Lo (who sold the Kzem a frog-bat on a holy day), Prottle (who sold the palace of the King of Vandaria to the King of Vandaria), and the self-styled Lord Niff (who, I have heard it whispered, was the original inventor of the fox twist, the cheat that broke the bank at the Casino Grande). In addition, I have seen Rogues of interuniversal renown fail to gain admittance to even discuss their membership with the secretary — on one memorable day I passed a famous financier, in company with the head of the Hy-Brasail mafia and a preeminent prime minister on their way down the back stairs with the blackest of expressions upon their faces, having obviously been told not even to think about returning. No, the ones who make it into the Rogues’ Club are a high bunch. I am sure that you will have heard of each of them. Not under those names, of course, but the touch is distinctive, is it not?
I myself gained membership by means of a brilliant piece of creative scientific research, something that revolutionized the thinking of a whole generation. It was my disdain for regular methodology and, as I have said, creative research that gained me membership, and when I am in that part of the cosmos I make a point of stopping off for an evening, taking in some sparkling conversation, drinking the club’s fine wines, and basking in the presence of my moral equals.
It was late in the evening and the log fire was burning low in the grate, and a handful of us sat and drank one of the fine dark wines of Spidireen in an alcove in the great hall. “Of course,” one of my new friends was saying, “there are some scams that no self-respecting rogue would ever touch, they are so old and classless and tired. For example, selling a tourist the Ponti Bridge.”
“It’s the same with Nelson’s Column, or the Eiffel Tower, or the Brooklyn Bridge, back on my home-world,” I told them. “Sad little con games, with as much class as a back-alley game of Find the Lady. But look on the good side: Nobody who sold the Ponti Bridge would ever get membership in a club like this.”
“No?” said a quiet voice from the corner of the room. “How strange. I do believe it was the time I sold the Ponti Bridge that gained me membership in this club.” A tall gentleman, quite bald and most exquisitely dressed, got up from the chair in which he had been sitting, and walked over to us. He was sipping the inside of an imported rhûm fruit, and smiling, I think at the effect that he had created. He walked over to us, pulled up a cushion, and sat down. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said.
My friends introduced themselves (the gray-haired deft woman, Gloathis; the short, quiet dodger Redcap) as did I.
He smiled wider. “Your fame precedes each of you, I am honored. You may call me Stoat.”
“Stoat?” said Gloathis. “The only Stoat I ever heard of was the man who pulled the Derana Kite job, but that was… what, over a hundred years ago. What am I thinking? You adopted the name as a tribute, I presume.”
“You are a wise woman,” said Stoat. “It would be impossible for me to be the same man.” He leaned forward on his cushion. “You were talking about the sale of the Ponti Bridge?”
“Indeed we were.”
“And you were all of the opinion that selling the Ponti Bridge is a measly scam, unworthy of a member of this club? And perhaps you are right. Let us examine the ingredients of a good scam.” He ticked off the points on the fingers of his left hand as he spoke. “Firstly, the scam must be credible. Secondly, it must be simple — the more complex the more chance of error. Thirdly, when the sucker is stung he must be stung in such a way as to prevent him from ever turning to the law. Fourthly, the mainspring of any elegant con is human greed and human vanity. Lastly, it must involve trust — confidence, if you will.”
“Surely,” said Gloathis.
“So you are telling me that the sale of the Ponti Bridge — or any other major landmark not yours to sell — cannot have these characteristics? Gentlemen. Lady. Let me tell you my story.
“I had arrived in Ponti some years ago almost penniless. I had but thirty gold crowns, and I needed a million. Why? I am afraid that is another story. I took stock of myself — I had the gold crowns and some smart robes. I was fluent in the aristocratic Ponti dialect, and I am, I pride myself, quite brilliant. Still, I could think of nothing that would bring me the kind of money I had to have in the time by which I needed it. My mind, usually teeming and coruscating with fine schemes, was a perfect blank. So, trusting to my gods to bring me inspiration, I went on a guided tour of the city… ”