Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

He took off his glasses and polished them on his sleeve; when he looked up for a moment, his eyes seemed grotesquely small. “But before he started his little adventure, I think he left himself an out—something that would bring him back to Harvard and Newport and all that if he ever wanted to go. Something that would make him rich, really rich, no matter what his family did while he was gone. Even if he was declared legally dead, for example.

“I’m not going to ask if anybody buys that idea. Somebody does—me. I’ve talked it over a little with Madame S. here, and although she doesn’t see it my way, she agrees that Free wasn’t nuts, and he really did have something very valuable salted away.” The thick lenses back in place, Stubb looked toward the witch. “Right?”

Her nod was guarded, but unmistakably a nod.

“So I talked to her. I said, listen here, whatever it was, I’m going after it and you’re going after it too. You’ve got your way of operating and I’ve got mine, and it’s even money we’ll just screw each other up so somebody else gets it or nobody gets it at all. I’ve never doublecrossed a client, and I never will. Let’s join and split it down the middle. She’s a smart lady; she agreed. Now we’re making the same offer to you two. You lived with him just like we did. It’s likely one of you—maybe both of you—heard something we didn’t, something that might be important. Throw in with us, and you’re each in for ten percent of whatever we find. But it’s got to be now, and you’ve got to be willing to work for the partnership as well as talk. Do you want in?”

“We get ten percent,” Barnes said.

“Right.”

“You said you were giving us the same deal you made with Madame Serpentina, and you said the two of you were going to divide it equally.”

“Divide what?” Stubb snorted. “We don’t even know if anything’s really there. If it is, ten percent could be a fortune.”

Candy yawned. “Jim, if it was just you, I’d be in. You know that. The way it is …”

Barnes said, “And I’d be delighted to assist Madame Serpentina; but that would be—uh—a matter of gallantry. This is business, and not very good business, not very profitable business.”

“Candy said she thought Free was crazy. Do you think so too, Ozzie?”

Slowly, Barnes shook his head.

“What do you think?”

“I’m going to reserve that,” Barnes said. “I’ll tell you in the morning. Maybe.”

“In the morning?”

Barnes shrugged. “You’re going to have to let Candy and me stay here. As Madame Serpentina said a few minutes ago, it’s already so late that if it were summer it would be getting light out.”

Candy said, “That’s right. Dibs on the bathroom.”

“If you two stay here, you’re going to be sleeping on the floor,” Stubb told them. “I should have said we will—all three of us. Let’s get that straight right now.”

“What the hell!” The fat girl stared at him openmouthed. “There’s two double beds.”

“Right. And if more than one person uses them, the maid will report it, and the hotel will know there’s been more than one person staying in the room. We can’t afford that. It’s Madame S.’s room, so she gets a bed. The rest of us bunk on the floor or in chairs—or not at all.”

Candy was in the bathroom, in the tub. As Barnes lay on his back, almost precisely where the table from which they had eaten had stood, he could hear her singing, and occasionally splashing.

He would get up, Barnes thought, and have a shower when she was finished. He wished he had clean underwear. Perhaps Madame Serpentina would not object if he washed what he had, and left them—undershirt. Jockey shorts—to dry on a towel bar. On the shower curtain rod. He would sleep in his pants and shirt. Would Stubb object if he pressed his pants under the mattress of the spare bed? No, he couldn’t do that. Tomorrow—today—he would have to get his bag, his sample cases, from the lockers in the bus station. They were good for only twenty-four hours. They had taken almost the last of his money. Would Madame Serpentina allow him to store them here? Surely she would, even if he couldn’t sleep here again. In the lobby, perhaps, for a time. If only she had gone naked to bed. He would have seen her, no matter how dark the room. He had seen more, much more, through the hole. It didn’t matter now—the house was gone anyway—the black ball swinging. He would have to sell something to get more coins for the lockers. His watch, perhaps. No, that was gone, already gone. The ticket was in his wallet. Free’s ticket? Could that have been what old Free meant? Was it in pawn, whatever he had possessed, the thing he had so obliquely spoken off? Or was it oblique, the knight hooking left, hooking right, the bishop sliding off to one side? Perhaps it only seemed so now, Free’s treasure. Money or bonds, Stubb thought. Madame Serpentina thought it was a crown, though she hadn’t said so. A treasure in a wall; a wall with a sign, Free had said. An unmistakable sign. The picture was in one sample case now, but the hole was no longer behind it. Would never, never be again. He slid aside the picture and reached through, drew forth a treasure … a what? A chest filled with gold and emeralds. Slithering from some childhood memory, an old cobra, white and blind, twined about them. Surely not that. That was not like Free at all, Free who had owned no turban, whose complexion had been, if anything, lighter than his own. And anyway such treasures are found under floors. This was in a wall. Did the others know? Candy, Madame Serpentina? Free had breakfasted with Candy, she said. Or Stubb, Stubb was much too clever to be safe, but he couldn’t sell. He hadn’t sold them on it, and he had wanted to so much. Perhaps because he was too clever, too clearly dangerous even for Candy who loved him.

No one, Barnes thought, has ever loved me. Possibly Little Ozzie would have if things had been different. I can sell, he thought, but in the end they find they’ve been sold a bill of goods, of bads. I’m never as good as they’ve been led to believe, never earned as much as they thought I would. Still I’ll have it on my stone, he thought, if I can. “He Could Sell.” If I were rich I’d have a gate so I could have a stone shield over it: Meus Vendo. Something like that—the ones who carved the shield would know. They’d have to.

There was a grunt and a heaving splash—presumably Candy was rising from the tub.

I wonder if she’s left me any hot water, Barnes thought, then remembered that he was in a hotel, with hot water enough for a thousand bathers. He wondered if she had left any dry towels. Meus vendo, ego salum. Lois had wanted a big house. He would show it to her sometime. “That’s the gatekeeper’s lodge, of course. We could follow the drive up to the main entrance, Lo, but the poplar walk is really nicer, and we might see some deer. That? Just a peacock, we’ve got quite a flock. Going to have one for Christmas dinner, just to thin them out.”

The bathroom door opened, releasing a gush of steam and blinding light. The towels of the Consort were voluminous indeed, and Candy had contrived, though barely, to wrap herself in one. Wet, her always tousled hair hung in ragamuffin curls. Her immense legs, thick as pillars at the thigh, glowed pink above feet like boiled shrimps. Barnes sat up. “Finished?”