Albert blinked.
“Wha—” he began.
“I jumped,” George explained. “Brrrrrr,” he shook his soaked robes like a huge dog, “the lake’s cold, and wet!”
Albert looked dazedly at the puddles around George’s great feet. He blinked, looking up at George, struggling futilely for words.
“I kin do anything,” George announced with shy pride, “anything at all.”
Albert Addin was the sort of person who could harbor strong suspicions, nourish dogged doubts. But when you put the evidence before him he believed, instantly and without quibbling.
This was the case now. Albert was thunderstruck, but Albert believed. Implicitly. He had asked to be shown. He had been. Q.E.D.
“So you are a genie,” Albert said at last. “Well I never—”
Albert left the sentence unfinished, while the cogs in his mental adaptation machine whirled frantically into gear to meet this new state of affairs. Albert would have an unearthly fear over the possibility that things like ghosts, or genies, existed. Like many people, it was the unknown that terrified him. But confronted with something that he knew to be true, Albert Addin was made of sterner stuff. He faced facts, met issues. Now he was doing both.
“So you’re a genie,” Albert said with some degree of calm. “Well, that’s nice and all that, old boy. But really, I’m afraid you’ll have to toddle along, go back to where you came from. There’s no use for you here, old man. Can’t use you, sorry.” He made his voice crisp, authoritative, and even waved his hand vaguely to round out his comments.
“But yuh called!” George, the genie, had a desperate, pleading note in his voice. There was a look in his bovine eyes that tore at the very fiber of Albert’s heartstrings. “Yuh rubbed the lamp,” the genie was going on, “didn’ cha?” He gulped. “Yuh can’t call a guy fer a job, and then tell him there ain’t none. Not after he ain’t had no work in over a thousand years, yuh can’t!” In spite of himself, Albert felt like a man who has just slapped an orphan across its round little face.
“Over a thousand years?” he said incredulously. “Does Madame Perkins know about this?”
George, the genie, had tears in his eyes. His voice was a pleading croak. He’d removed his turban and was worrying it with his great paws, occasionally using it to dab at the corners of his moist eyes.
“Over a thousand years,” he repeated. “Times has been tough, all over. Yuh ain’t gonna send me back now, are yuh? Yuh wouldn’t thrun me outta the foist job I get in over a thousand years, would yuh?”
Somewhere within the narrow confines of Albert Addin’s breast, there was a warm and kindly heart. And now it was touched by a swift, wrenching surge of pity. He tried to make his expression a little bit more kindly, tried to think of something which he could say to soften the blow of the hulking monster.
But George, the genie, was continuing desperately, apparently aware that his new-found employer wanted none of him.
“Please, I kin do anything. Anything at all. Jest try me. Yuh seen how quick like I jumped into the lake, didn’cha? There ain’t nothing hardly I can’t do!”
Albert, feeling like a stern but kindly padre in a Spanish Mission movie, shook his head slowly.
“No. Sorry, old boy. Might think of you in the future. If you’ll just fill out a blank and leave your name with the girl at the desk, I’ll call you when anything comes up.”
“Girl? Desk?” George was puzzled. “A, figure of speech,” Albert informed him.
“I kin getcha any number of girls yuh might want,” George said in sudden inspiration.
“No thanks,” Albert was firm. “I have one.”
“How about palaces?” George suggested hopefully. “Yuh want I should make yuh a palace? I kin make foist rate palaces!”
Albert shook his head again. “There’s nothing you can do for me, old man — as much as I’d like to help you out.”
“Jools?” George inquired earnestly. “I kin getcha all sortsa jools. Roooopies, dimunds, hatfullsa jools. Assorted sulectshums, if yuh like ’em better dat way!”
Albert wavered. Not at the declaration of power on George’s part, but because of the infinite look of dog-like pleading in his bovine eyes.
“Frankly,” George babbled on, “I need the woik. I got refrunces, too!”
Albert shook his head, then, with a start, looked at his watch. If was almost noon. He’d be late for luncheon if this lumbering lunkhead didn’t remove himself pretty quickly. And suddenly, for the first time, Albert realized what a problem George would present if he were discovered by any of the Mastiffs or their servants!
“Look,” Albert said, less kind, now and more anxious. “Why don’t you call again some time. I’m in a hurry. I’ve an appointment.” Albert’s brow was suddenly moist with the perspiration of worry.
“Yuh can’t walk out without yuh should look at my refrunces,” George pleaded desperately. He was digging deeply into his filthy bedsheeted, yellow robes, and now his paw came forth clutching some yellowed parchments. He handed these over to Albert. “See, refrunces, past guys what employed me, and for what I worked good.”
Automatically, and against his better judgment, Albert found himself accepting the yellowed parchments. They were obviously ancient, and in a dirty state of near decay. But the fine script on them was still legible. His eyes popped open wide as he peered at the script.
“Why,” said Albert amazedly, “I can read this script. It’s written in English!”
“Yeah,” George nodded matter-of-factly. “It was writ by a magician who I last woiked for. He writ it in lang-witch which is plain no matter what langwitch yuh speaks. Like my talk. Anybody understands it.”
“I haven’t time,” said Albert as the shock left him somewhat. “You tell me what these references say and then please vanish, or something. I’m going to be late for luncheon, and I can’t have you around!” Albert himself was growing a little desperate now.
George looked suddenly sheepish.
“I can’t read so good,” he admitted, reddening. “I never learnt. Always too busy.”
“You mean,” Albert was more amazed by this than by anything that had occurred so far, “you mean you’re a genie and you can’t read?”
George nodded.
“Me mudder made me get out an’ woik when I was young. I never got no educashun.”
Albert glanced swiftly at the ancient script, the ancient script that read as modernly as a letter from one of his creditors.
To who it may concern: This gargantuan son of a stupid camel is a menace to any right-minded employer. Earnest, yes. Willing, of course. But blundering — May Allah forgive the words I have in my mind for him! He is all thumbs. Everything he does is reckoned in ghastly blundering which leads to stupendous calamity. Do not hire this half-witted oaf. If he does not eat you out of house and home, he will see to it that your brow becomes the resting place for the demons of madness. I have made the lamp by which he can be summoned invisible — in the hope that it will never be found again, and that he will languish through time in the ranks of the unemployed. If, by any chance, you have penetrated the cloak of invisibility around the lamp, and have summoned this lunk-headed lout, I can only wish you the patience and fortune of the Prophet.
There was a new look in Albert’s eye as he turned from the letter to George, who stood watching him with a proudly sluggy smile, a look of a growing apprehension, the approaching desperation of fear.