The Paper Grail by James P. Blaylock Read Free Book Online Page B

“I’ve got something to show you.”
    Howard wondered if he’d ever get a chance at the wine. He was vastly relieved, though. The sketch must be all right, after all. Mr. Jimmers had hidden it upstairs, fearing thieves. The man was a crank, a joker, but he was wily. There was no use getting mad at him or trying to second-guess him. But how about this business about old Graham?
Had
he been murdered? And if he had, why? Who would bother to murder a ninety-year-old?
    He followed along up the stairs, winding around past a second-story landing and then onto a third, where there was a stained-glass window looking out into the darkness. The window depicted what might be a wall built of salmon-shaped stones, or else a dry river littered with flopping fish. In front of it lay a broken Humpty Dumpty, and racing down out of the wooded hills beyond were two strangely shaped automobiles, pieced together with delicate ribbons of copper foil and jeweled with bits of faceted glass.
    That’s
where I got the Humpty Dumptys from, Howard thought, relieved just a little bit. He had no doubt seen the window years ago and had carried the Humpty Dumpty around with him since, hiding back in the shadows of his mind. He reminded himself that there was almost always some reasonable, day-today explanation for even the weirdest aspects of one’s dreams. The notion satisfied him for about fifteen seconds, and then it occurred to him that this window might just as easily be another mystery and not any sort of explanation at all.
    He hadn’t any time to study it out, though, because Mr. Jimmers opened a door into the attic right then, and leaned in to switch on the light. He stepped back to let Howard into a broad room with exposed rafters and roof sheathing and the undersides of shingles. Two big leaded windows were boxed into the roof, serving as skylights, and there were two more windows in the wall that looked out on the ocean. There was a seven-inch telescope on wheels in the corner and star charts on the wall around it. An oak desk and a couple of comfortable-lookingMorris chairs with low footstools sat in the center of the room. Books lined the walls, stacked up sideways and endways and ready to tumble off the edges of shelves. The room was heavy with the smell of pipe tobacco.
    “Keep the bottle,” Mr. Jimmers said.
    “Sorry?” asked Howard, turning around.
    Mr. Jimmers still stood outside in the hall. He had set the wine bottle and the glass on the floor just inside the room. He waved, wiggling his fingers by his ear, and then shut the door. Howard heard the click of the lock being thrown before he’d taken half a step forward. A tiny panel opened in the door, and Mr. Jimmers peered back in. Howard could just see his nose and eyes. “Ham sandwich suit you?” Mr. Jimmers asked.
    Howard didn’t answer. He stood there mystified and furious.
    “Think of this as a credentials check,” Mr. Jimmers said. “Imagine that you’ve just made a border crossing into eastern Europe and you’re being detained while the authorities have a look at your papers. Is everything in order, they wonder, or do we beat him with rubber hoses?”
    Laughing, Mr. Jimmers shut the panel, and there was the sound of his footsteps descending the stairs. Then there was silence. Howard waited for him, expecting the door to open again at any moment. Certainly this was another joke. Mr. Jimmers had a sense of humor that had been honed in outer space.
    When the panel opened again, though, ten minutes later, Mr. Jimmers clearly wasn’t in any mood to let Howard out. He shoved a ham sandwich through the hole, and then a bag of Fritos and a too-ripe banana. Then he poked the comer of a quilt through, and Howard gratefully enough hauled the whole thing into the room, like a magician pulling an immense scarf through the mouth of a tiny bottle. “Watch the heater,” Mr. Jimmers said. “Might blow a fuse if you’re not careful.” Then the panel slid shut and he was