The Paper Grail (52 page)

“Of course not,” Edith said.

“Anyway, picture a driving range out into the ocean. Maybe buoys out there as yardage markers. Turns out you can buy worthless old balls from courses all over the country for next to nothing, as well as seconds from the golf ball factory. The way I figure it, people will pay plenty for a bucket of balls if they can just knock them to hell and gone into the Pacific.”

Edith smiled happily. “Yes,” she said. “That would be nice, wouldn’t it? A golf course on the ocean, like Pebble Beach. Remember when we took the Seventeen-mile Drive down around Carmel and stayed at that Spanish-style hotel? We had the worst food in the world at that Mexican restaurant.”

“Tasted like dog food,” Roy said. “All that black, shredded meat. It wasn’t beef; I know that much. Anyway, we’d’ paint them, the golf balls—dip them by the basketful and then pick out the worst of them for the driving range. We’ll buy secondhand putters and drivers. You see them all the time at garage sales. That’s where you and Sylvia come into the picture.”

Roy stared off into space as if he were picturing the whole thing in his mind—a seaside kingdom above the ocean, built of stucco and electronics and wooden whirlibobs. “Like I said,” he continued, “the video games would draw the kids more than the golf would. You don’t even have to buy the video machines—just pay a percentage. A man comes around once a week to service them and haul away gunnysacks full of quarters. They’re doing
this sort of thing all over the place down south. There was a big article in
Forbes …”

The phone rang just then in the next room, and Glenwood Touchey jumped up from the bed, slipped his pistol into his pocket, and pushed open the connecting door in order to listen in on the call.

“Who?” they heard Mrs. Lamey ask. There was a moment’s silence.

“Not
the
Artemis Jimmers,” she said, affecting astonishment. “Well, yes, we
are
here at the motel. We’re beating poor Mr. Barton to within an inch, aren’t we? You can have the inch, though, if you hurry. And please don’t send any more emissaries unless you want to lose them, too. I believe I made it clear that I’m most anxious to consult with Howard Barton, not with his extended family. Listen very carefully now. When I hang up, I’m sending the Bartons away in a car, in very capable hands. If anyone shows up on my doorstep, anyone at all, except Howard Barton, I’m going to place a single phone call to the awful place that they’ve taken the poor Bartons. I’m going to let the phone ring exactly once, and then hang up. That ring will be the last thing that either one of them hears this side of hell. Tell that to the daughter, please. None of us can afford secrets.”

After this speech there was another silence. Through the door Edith could see Mrs. Lamey’s eyes narrow. Then she turned away to face the opposite wall as she listened. The door opened and Stoat came in, chain-locking it behind him and carrying a cup of coffee. He stood silently and expectantly, waiting for Mrs. Lamey to speak.

“It’s
what?
” she asked finally. “A machine that conjures up ghosts? Built by John Ruskin? It only conjures up
his
ghost? Ah! It’s because his bones are in it? That’s rather cheap, isn’t it?” She broke into a theatrical titter, turning around to look into the second room. There was no laughter in her face. “Mr. Barton has been telling me that your tin shed contains the Ark of the Covenant. He had me half convinced. I’ve never seen such a pack of liars as you two silly men. Really, you’re both quite amusing. This whole situation is just as entertaining as it can be, isn’t it?”

After another moment’s listening, she held her hand over the receiver and said toward the second door, “Mr. Jimmers insists that you made up this nonsense about the Ark of the Covenant, Mr. Barton. He claims you were lying to protect him, to keep the
real
identity of the machine a secret. He claims that we can
use it to call John Ruskin up from the spirit world.”

“That’s entirely correct,” Roy said, nodding broadly. “I was lying about it all along.”

Into the receiver Mrs. Lamey said, “Mr. Barton admits to having lied. We’ll have to punish him for that.” She listened again and then said, “But it’s so very enjoyable, isn’t it? No, I’m not interested in trading anyone for your machine. Yes, I’ve read your pamphlet about phone-calling the dead. When did you publish that, by the way? Back around 1961, wasn’t it? And I’m just as familiar as I can be with the work that Mr. Edison was doing on the spirit telephone when he died. He was a lunatic, too. They come in all shapes and sizes, Artemis, genius notwithstanding. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, though. I’ll allow Howard Barton to bring the machine along, as a sort of gift. That’s right. I’ll take it into the bargain, since you’ve been gracious enough to offer.”

She hung up right then and sat looking at the phone. “The fool’s going to bring the machine back around, too,” she said to Stoat. “Lord knows what it
really
is.” To Touchey she said, “Get them out of here now. Gwendolyn is waiting for you. You two behave yourselves. Pay no attention to what I told that idiot over the phone. If I don’t call by two A.M. do what I’ve asked you to do.”

“T
HE
machine angle was a dead loss,” Mr. Jimmers said unhappily as he hung up the phone. “It was worth a try, though. One more quick phone call. What’s the number of the pay phone down at the harbor? We’ve got to get someone down to watch the motel, to follow anyone who tries to move them out of there.”

Sylvia recited the number. “I’ll stay here for now,” she said after Jimmers made the call. “Someone ought to be near the phone. Mother … I don’t know … Maybe she’ll come back. I’d want to be here. Why don’t you two pick me up on your way back down?”

“Good enough,” Jimmers said. “But watch out. Don’t answer the door without knowing who it is.”

“They won’t bother me,” she said. ‘There’s no reason for it.” Then she ushered them out the door as if she wanted to be alone, and Howard very nearly suggested that Jimmers drive back down to the stone house by himself. The night was windy, clear, and cold, and what Howard wanted to do was to spend the next forty minutes alone with Sylvia, just the two of them, before he had to confront Mrs. Lamey at the Sea Spray Motel.

“We’ll take your car,” Jimmers said, heading for the street. “If they see my car parked out front here, they won’t get up to any tricks. They know me.”

Howard was swept along by Jimmers’ haste, and the two of them piled into Howard’s truck, driving out to Main Street and turning south. There would be plenty of time to spend with Sylvia later, Howard told himself optimistically. Before the sun rose in the morning he and Sylvia would thrash things out. It was either that, or Howard would go home. There was no staying on the north coast unless his staying involved Sylvia.

“So Mr. Bennet’s truck is parked downtown now, behind the Tip Top Lounge,” Jimmers said. “We’ll pick it up on the way back. Key’s under the mat.”

“Mrs. Lamey won’t fall for the fake sketch,” Howard said, pulling his mind back around to a more immediate problem. “Not a second time.”

“Of course she won’t. I’m betting on that. She’ll make you
use
the thing, is what she’ll do, and that can’t be done indoors. She’ll take you somewhere—not far, because she’ll be in a sweat to get this business done. My guess is that the two of you will go down to the beach, and she’ll insist that you demonstrate its authenticity right there. You can bet your eyeteeth that she’s aware of your little storm this afternoon. If I’m right, it’ll be a dangerous moment on the beach there, which is where you’ve got to take her. You’ll insist on it. You’ve got to seem desperate to free Roy and Edith. She’ll expect the thing to be a fake, of course, and if you don’t come through with something—a rain squall or whatever …”

After a moment’s silence he went on. “I’m tolerably certain she won’t kill
you
, though. Not yet, anyway. It’s Roy and Edith that we’re worried about. She’s
utterly
capable of any sort of atrocity. Remember that. She’s terribly hungry, though, for what she’s been chasing all these years. Graham’s passing puts everything within her reach, and I’m thinking that she’ll be nearly insane with all her nasty passions. That’ll be to our advantage. You’ll make use of it. She’s got to be convinced that she’s got the real article, though, which is where Sylvia and I play our part.”

“Do you think she’ll move them out of there,” Howard asked, “like she says?”

Jimmers thought for a moment before answering. “No, she just wants to scare us away from calling in the authorities. We’ll have to let our friend Bennet watch that angle. We can’t worry
about that now. We’ve got to pick up the fraudulent copy and get back up here.”

Howard accelerated to sixty, checking the rearview mirror.

“Damn it!” Mr. Jimmers said.
“Why
didn’t I think to bring it in the first place? I don’t like all this rushing up and down. It propagates confusion.”

“There wasn’t time to think,” Howard said, watching Caspar hurtle past on their right. “How do you manufacture these fakes? They look awfully good, don’t they?”

“They look good enough to fool almost anyone. It won’t fool Heloise Lamey, though, not once she gets a chance to study it out. We’re depending on haste and disorder. It’s an easy trick, forgery is. You use a photographic negative to expose a light-sensitive zinc plate, then etch it with nitric acid. Simple printing plate, really. The paper was authentically old. I bought it years ago in San Francisco from a dealer in oriental antiquities. You can fake up old-seeming ink out of common iron gall ink treated with chemicals—hydrogen peroxide, mainly. The process is absurdly simple and cheap for a man with time on his hands. Many a successful forger has used it. The trouble in this case, of course, is that an accurate forgery isn’t enough. She’ll want to see
results
from it, when what you have to offer her is a scrap of trash.”

His mind clouded by thoughts of Sylvia again, Howard only half listened to Jimmers’ discussion of the art of forgery. He realized, though, that Jimmers was looking at him with a serious face, as if he expected a response of some sort.

“Sylvia’s your daughter, isn’t she?” Howard asked him, the question leaping out of him before he had time to temper it.

Mr. Jimmers said nothing at all, but sat staring at Howard with a stricken face.

“I found a copy of your book this afternoon,” Howard said, rushing to explain. “I’m sorry we were fooling around down there. We’d locked ourselves into the passage, though, and were trying to find a way back out. Anyway, I found what must be a first printing of the book, and the dedication is different from what Sylvia remembered it to be. You changed the dedication when Edith married Uncle Roy.”

Picket fences and moonlit hillsides flew past as they sat in awkward silence, and the silence made Howard realize that Jimmers was struggling to say something, but couldn’t say it. Suddenly Howard hated himself. What an insensitive clod he had been just to blurt all this out. Why couldn’t he have been a little bit subtle? He wasn’t the only person on earth who had
an interest in Sylvia. “Sorry,” he said then. “I shouldn’t have thrown you like that, I …”

“You need to know the truth,” Jimmers said shakily, “and so does Sylvia.”

Howard slowed the truck, turning off the highway and into the shadow of the cypress trees, bumping along up the driveway toward the stone house.

“I … Back then, I wasn’t well,” Mr. Jimmers said, staring out through the windshield. “I told you about some of it. Sylvia is my daughter, but obviously I couldn’t bring her up. That was clear. Roy Barton could. He was happy to. Roy Barton has a heart like a whale. And I’m not being facetious, either. We’ve had our differences, but I won’t say anything against the man now. He succeeded where I would have failed. There was no reason, back then, to saddle Sylvia with the stigma of having a father who …”

Howard shut off the ignition, happy for himself but not very happy for Mr. Jimmers, who had apparently finished talking. “It must have been hard for you,” Howard said, the two of them sitting in the quiet truck.

“Yes,” Jimmers said, and then he opened the truck door and climbed heavily out onto the ground, walking away toward the front door. In the light of the porch lamp, he stooped to untie his shoes, his hands fumbling clumsily with the laces.

28

J
IMMERS
and Sylvia, driving Sylvia’s Toyota, dropped Howard off at the Tip Top Lounge, and from there he drove back up to the Sea Spray Motel in Bennet’s flatbed truck. Leaving the keys in the ignition, he parked so that the truck faced the highway. He climbed out into the night and looked south toward the lights of town. The Toyota was parked near the Gas ’n’ Grub, its front end just visible in the glow of the parking lot lamp. He scanned the dunes along Pudding Creek. There they were, Sylvia and Jimmers, waiting in the darkness beneath the railway trestle.
Mr. Jimmers waved slowly at him, and then the two of them vanished back into the shadows.

The tin shed sat on the truck bed behind Howard, full of garden tools, empty flowerpots, sacks of fertilizer, folded-up aluminum lawn chairs, and Mr. Jimmers’ oddball machine. Holding the fake sketch beneath his coat, Howard walked straight to room 18 and knocked on the door. The light went out inside. The curtain shifted momentarily, and the door opened partway.