Too Many Magicians

CHAPTER 10

As the official carriage, bearing the London arms, moved through the streets toward the Royal Steward Hotel, its pneumatic tires jouncing briskly on their spring suspensions as a soft accompaniment to the clopping of the horses’ hooves, Sean O Lochlainn, Master Sorcerer, leaned back in the seat, clutching his symbol-decorated carpetbag to his round paunch.

“Ah, my lords,” he said to the two men on the seat opposite, “a relief it is, indeed, to be free again. Twenty-four hours of sitting in the Tower is not my notion of a grand time, and you may be sure of that. Not that I object to being alone in a comfortable room for a while; any sorcerer who doesn’t take a week or so off every year for a Contemplation Retreat will find his power deserting him. But when there’s work to be done…” He paused. “My lord, you didn’t get me out of the Tower by solving this case, did you?”

Lord Darcy laughed. “No fear, my good Sean. You haven’t missed any of the excitement yet.”

“His lordship,” said Lord Bontriomphe, “got you out by simple but effective blackmail.”

“Counter-blackmail, if you please,” Lord Darcy corrected. “I merely showed de London that Lord Bontriomphe could be jailed on the same sort of flimsy evidence that the Marquis used to jail you.”

“Now wait a moment,” said Lord Bontriomphe. “The evidence wasn’t all that flimsy. There was certainly enough — in both cases — to permit holding a man for questioning.”

“Certainly,” Lord Darcy agreed. “But My Lord Marquis had no intention of questioning Master Sean. He was adhering to the letter of the law rather than to its spirit. It is a matter of family rivalry; we have, the Marquis and I, similar although not identical abilities, and therefore a basically friendly but at times emotionally charged antagonism. He would not dare have locked up an ordinary subject of His Majesty on such evidence unless he honestly believed that the suspect had actually committed the crime. Indeed, I will go further: he would never even have considered such an act.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” said Lord Bontriomphe, “since it happens to be true. But once in a while, this rivalry goes a little too far. Normally, I keep out of it, but then—”

“Permit me to correct you,” Lord Darcy said with a smile. “Normally, you do not keep out of it. To the contrary, you are normally rigidly loyal to My Lord Marquis; you normally take his side, forcing me to outwit both of you — an admittedly difficult job. This time, however, you felt that imprisoning Master Sean in order to get at me was just a little too much. I am well aware that, had it been I who went to the Tower, the matter would have been quite different.”

Lord Bontriomphe gazed dreamily at the roof of the carriage. “Now there’s a thought,” he said in a speculative tone.

“Don’t think on it too hard, my lord,” said Master Sean with gentle menace. “Not too hard at all, at all.”

Lord Bontriomphe brought his eyes down sharply and started to say something, but his words were forever lost as the carriage slowed suddenly and the driver opened the trapdoor in the roof and said:

“The Royal Steward, my lords.”

Half a minute later, the footman opened the door, and the three men got out. Lord Bontriomphe quietly slipped a couple of large coins into the footman’s hand. “Wait for us, Barney. See that the carriage and horses are taken care of, and then you and Denys wait in the pub across the street. We may be quite some time, so have a few beers and relax. I’ll send word if we need you.”

“Very good, my lord,” Goodman Barney said warmly. “Thank you.”

Then Lord Bontriomphe followed Lord Darcy and Master Sean into the Royal Steward.

Lord Darcy was standing alone just inside the foyer, looking through the glass-paned doors at the crowd in the lobby.

“Where’s Master Sean?” Bontriomphe asked.

“In there. I sent him on ahead. As you will observe, there are at least a dozen well-wishers and possibly two dozen who are merely curious, all of whom are crowded around Sean, congratulating him upon his release, saying they knew all along he was innocent, and pumping him for information about the murder of Sir James Zwinge. While their attention is thus distracted, my lord, you and I will make a quiet entrance and go directly to the murder room. Come.”

They did not attract attention as they went in. This was Visitors’ Day at the Sorcerers Convention, and the lobby was filled with folk who had come to see the displays and the sorcerers themselves. They were just two more sightseers.

At one of the display booths, a journeyman sorcerer was demonstrating a children’s toy to two wide-eyed children and a fondly patronizing father. It consisted of a six-inch black wand with one white tip, five differently-colored pith balls an inch in diameter, and a foot-long board with six holes in it, five of which were ringed with colors to match the balls and the fifth one ringed with white.

“Now you’ll notice, my lads,” said the journeyman sorcerer, “that the balls aren’t in their proper holes; the colors don’t match. The object of the game is to put ’em right, you see. The rule is that you move one ball at a time, like this:” He aimed the wand at the board, which was several feet away, and one of the balls floated smoothly up and across, to drop into the extra hole. Then another moved into the vacated hole to match colors. The process was repeated until all the balls were in the proper holes. “You see? Now, I’ll just mix these balls up again and let you try it, lad. Just point the white tip of the wand and think of which color ball you want to come up; then, when it’s in the air, think of the color hole you want it to go to. There, now. That’s it—”

It was more than just a toy, Lord Darcy knew; it was a testing and teaching device. With the spell it now had on it, anyone could do the trick; but the spell was timed to fade slowly over a period of a few months. By that time, most children were thoroughly tired of it, anyway. But if a rare child with the Talent got hold of one, his interest usually did not wane. Furthermore, he began to get the feel of the spell itself, aided by the simple ritual and ceremony of the game. If that happened, the child would still be able to do the trick a year later, though none of his un-Talented friends would. The original spell had worn off and had been replaced by the child’s own simple version. A booklet went with the game which explained all that to the parents, urging them to have the child given further tests if he succeeded in preserving the activity of the toy.

At another booth, a priest in clerical black with white lace at collar and cuffs was distributing booklets describing the new building being erected at Oxford to house the Royal Thaumaturgical Laboratories at Edward’s College. The display was a scale model of the proposed structure.

Directly in their path, the two men saw what looked like an ordinary door frame. An illusion sign floated in its center, translucent blue letters that said: please step through.

As they did, the illusion sign vanished and they could feel what seemed to be a slight wind tugging at their clothing. On the other side, another illusion sign appeared.

“Quite a gadget,” said Lord Bontriomphe. “Look; even our boots are shiny,” he added as they walked through the second sign and it dissolved around them.

“Useful,” Lord Darcy agreed, “but quite impracticable. Sean told me they had it at the last Convention. It makes a good advertisement for the company, but that ’no home will be without one’ is visionary. Far too expensive, since the spell has to be renewed by a Master Sorcerer at least once a week. With this mob in here, they’ll be lucky if they get through the day with it.”

“Hm-m-m. Like that ‘See London From the Air’ device they had a few years back,” said Bontriomphe. “Remember that?”

“I read something about it. I don’t recall the details,” Lord Darcy said.

“It looked quite impressive. They had a crystal ball about” — he held his hands in front of him as though he were grasping an imaginary sphere — “oh, ten inches in diameter, I guess. It was mounted on a pedestal, and you looked into it from above. It gave you the weird feeling that you were looking down from a great height, from a point just above Admiral Buckingham Hall, where the exhibit was. You could actually see people walking about, and carriages moving through the streets, as though you were up in a cathedral spire looking down. There was a magic mirror suspended a couple of hundred feet above the building, you see, which projected the scene into the crystal by psychic reflection.”

“Ah, I see. Whatever happened to it? I’ve heard no more about it,” Lord Darcy said.

“Well, right off the bat, the War Office was interested. You can imagine what sort of reconnaissance you’d have, with a magic mirror floating high over enemy lines and an observer safe behind your own lines watching everything they were doing. Anyway, the War Office thaumaturgists are still working on it, but it hasn’t come to anything. In the first place, it takes three Masters to run it: One to levitate the mirror, one to keep the mirror activated, and one to keep the receiving crystal activated. And they have to be specially trained for the job and then train together as a team. In the second place, the sorcerers controlling the mirror have to be within sight of the mirror, and the plane of the surface has to be perpendicular to a radius of the crystal ball. Don’t ask me why; I’m no sorcerer and I don’t know a thing about the theory. At any rate, the thing hasn’t been made practical for long distance transmission of images yet.”

They left the lobby and started upstairs toward the late Sir James Zwinge’s room.

“So far,” said Lord Darcy, “aside from such things as the semaphore and the heliotelegraph — both of which require line-of-sight towers for transmission — the only practical means of long distance communication we have is the teleson. And the mathematical thaumaturgists still have not come up with a satisfactory theory to explain its functioning. Ah! I see that your Armsmen are on duty.” They had reached the top of the stairway. Down the hall, directly in front of the door to the murder room were two black-clad Armsmen of the King’s Peace.

“Good morning, Jeffers, Dubois,” said Lord Bontriomphe as he and Lord Darcy approached the door.

The Armsmen saluted. “Good morning, my lord,” said the older of the two.

“Everything all right? No disturbances?”

“None, my lord. Quiet as a tomb.”

“Jeffers, ” said Lord Bontriomphe with a smile, “with a wit like that, you will either rise rapidly to Master-at-Arms or you will remain a foot patrolman all your life.”

“My ambition is modest, my lord,” said Jeffers with a straight face. “I only wish to become a Sergeant-at-Arms. For that, I need only to be a half-wit.”

“Foot patrolman,” Lord Darcy said sadly. “Forever.” He looked at the door to the murder room. “I see they have covered the hole in the door.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Jeffers. “They just tacked this panel over the hole. Otherwise, the door’s untouched. Would you be wanting to look in, my lords?” He took a large, thick, heavy brass key from the pouch at his belt. “This is Sir James’ key,” he said. “You can open the door, but Grand Master Sir Lyon has put a spell on the room itself, my lords.”

Lord Darcy took the key, fitted it into the long, narrow keyhole, turned the bolt, and opened the door. He and Lord Bontriomphe stopped at the threshold.

There was no tangible barrier at the door. There was nothing they could see or touch. But the barrier was almost palpably there, nonetheless. Lord Darcy found that he had no desire to enter the room at all. Quite the contrary; he felt a distinct aversion to the room, a sense of wanting to avoid, at all costs, going into that room for any reason whatever. There was nothing in that room that interested him, no reason at all why he should enter it. It was taboo — a forbidden place. To look from without was both necessary and desirable; to enter was neither necessary nor desirable.

Lord Darcy surveyed the room with his eyes.

Master Sir James Zwinge still lay where he had fallen, looking as though he had died only minutes before, thanks to the preservative spell which had been cast over the corpse.

Footsteps came down the hall. Lord Darcy turned to see Master Sean approaching.

“Sorry to be so long, my lord,” said the sorcerer as he neared the door. He stopped at the threshold. “Now what have we here? Hm-m-m. An aversion spell, eh? Hm-m-m. And cast by a Master, too, I’ll be bound. It would take quite a time to solve that one.” He stood looking through the door.

“It was cast by Grand Master Sir Lyon himself,” said Lord Darcy.

“Then I’ll go fetch him to take it off,” said Master Sean. “I wouldn’t waste time trying to take it off meself.”

“Pardon me, Master Sorcerer,” said Armsman Jeffers deferentially, “are you Master Sean O Lochlainn?”

“That I am.”

The Armsman took an envelope from an inside jacket pocket. “The Grand Master,” he said, “told me to be sure and give this to you when you came, Master Sean.”

Master Sean placed his symbol-decorated carpetbag on the floor, took the envelope, opened it, extracted a single sheet of paper, and read it carefully.

“Ah!” he said, his round Irish face beaming. “I see! Ingenious! I shall most certainly have to remember that one!” He looked at Lord Darcy with the smile still wreathing his face. “Sir Lyon has given me the key. He expected me to be here this morning. Now, if you’ll excuse me for a few minutes—”

The tubby little Irish sorcerer knelt down and opened his carpetbag. He fished around inside and took out a gold-and-ebony wand, a small brazen bowl, an iron tripod with six-inch legs, two silver phials, and an oddly constructed flint-and-steel fire-striker.

The others stepped back respectfully. One does not disturb a magician at work.

Master Sean placed the tripod on the floor just in front of the open door and set the small brazen bowl on top of it. Then he put in a few lumps of charcoal from his carpetbag. Within two minutes, he had the coals glowing redly. Then he added a large pinch of powder from each of the two silver phials, and a dense column of aromatic blue-gray smoke arose from the small brazier. Master Sean traced a series of symbols in the air with his wand while he murmured something the others could not hear. Then he carefully folded, in an intricate and complex manner, the letter from Sir Lyon Grey. When it was properly folded, he dropped it on the coals. As it burst into flame, he traced more symbols and murmured further words.

“There,” he said. “You can go in now, my lords.”

The two investigators walked across the threshold. Their aversion to doing so had completely vanished. Master Sean took a small bronze lid from his carpetbag and fitted it tightly over the mouth of the little brazier.

“Just leave it there, lads,” he said to the two Armsmen. “It will cool off in a few minutes. Mind you don’t knock it over, now.” Then he joined Lord Darcy and Lord Bontriomphe inside the murder room.

Lord Darcy closed the door and looked at it. From the inside, the damage done by Lord Bontriomphe’s ax work was plainly visible. Otherwise, there was nothing unusual about the door. A rapid but thorough inspection of the doors and windows convinced Lord Darcy that Lord Bontriomphe had been absolutely right when he said the room was sealed. There were no secret panels, no trapdoors. The windows were firmly bolted, and there was no way they could have been bolted from the outside by other than magical means.

With difficulty, Lord Darcy slid back the bolt on one of the windows and opened it. It creaked gently as it swung outward.

Lord Darcy looked out the window. There was a thirty-foot drop of smooth stone beneath him. The window opened onto a small courtyard, where several chair-surrounded tables formed a part of the dining facilities of the Royal Steward Hotel.

Some of the tables were occupied. Five sorcerers, three priests, and a bishop had all heard the window open and were looking up at him.

Lord Darcy craned his neck around and looked up. Ten feet above were the windows of the next floor. Lord Darcy pulled his head back in and closed the window.

“No one went out that way,” he said firmly. “For an ordinary man to have done so would have required a rope. He would have had either to slide down thirty feet or to climb up ten feet hand over hand.”

“An ordinary man,” said Lord Bontriomphe, emphasizing the word. “But levitation is not too difficult a trick for a Master Sorcerer.”

“What say you, Master Sean?” Lord Darcy asked the tubby little sorcerer.

“It could have been done that way,” Master Sean admitted.

“Furthermore,” said Lord Bontriomphe, “those bolts could have been thrown from the outside by magic.”

“Indeed they could,” Master Sean agreed.

Lord Bontriomphe looked expectantly at Lord Darcy.

“Very well,” said Lord Darcy with a smile, “let us proceed to try that theory by what the geometers call, I believe, the reductio ad absurdum. Imagine the scene. What happens?”

He gestured toward the body on the floor. “Sir James is stabbed. Our sorcerer-murderer — if you’ll pardon the double entendre — goes to the window. He opens it. Then he steps up to the sill and steps out into empty air, levitating himself as he does so. Then he closes the window and proceeds to cast a spell which slides the bolts into their sockets. When that is done, he floats off somewhere — up or down, it matters not which.” He looked at Master Sean. “How long would that take?”

“Five or six minutes at the least. If he could do it at all. Levitation causes a tremendous psychic drain; the spell can only be held for a matter of minutes. In addition, you’re asking him to cast a second spell while he’s holding the first. A spell of the type that was cast on this room is what we call a static spell, my lord. It imposes a condition, you see. But levitating and the moving of bolts are kinetic spells; you have to keep them moving. To use two kinetic spells at the same time requires tremendous concentration, power, and precision. I would hesitate, myself, to try casting a window-locking spell with a thirty-foot drop beneath me. Certainly not if I were in a hurry or distracted.”

“And even if it could be done, it would take five or six minutes,” Lord Darcy said. “Bontriomphe, would you mind opening the other window? We haven’t tested it yet.”

The London investigator drew back the bolt and pushed the window open. It groaned audibly.

“What do you see out there?” Lord Darcy asked.

“About nine pairs of eyes staring up at me,” Lord Bontriomphe said.

“Exactly. Both windows make a slight noise when they are opened. That noise is quite audible in the courtyard below. Yesterday morning, Sir James’ scream was clearly audible through that window, but even if it had not been — even if Sir James had not screamed at all when he was stabbed — the killer could not have gone out through that window without being seen, much less hovered there for five or six minutes.”

Lord Bontriomphe pulled the window closed again. “What if he were invisible?” he asked, looking at the little Irish sorcerer.

“The Tarnhelm Effect?” asked Master Sean. He chuckled. “My lord, regardless of what the layman may think, the Tarnhelm Effect is extremely difficult to use in practice. Besides, ‘invisibility’ is a layman’s term. Spells using the Tarnhelm Effect are very similar in structure to the aversion spell you met at the door to this room. If a sorcerer were to cast such a spell about himself, your eyes would avoid looking directly at him. You wouldn’t realize it yourself, but you would simply keep your eyes averted from him at all times. He could stand in the middle of a crowd and no one could later swear that he was there because no one would have seen him except out of the corner of the eye, if you follow me.

“Even if he were alone, you wouldn’t see him because you’d never look at him. You would subconsciously assume that whatever it was you were seeing out of the corner of your eye was a cabinet or a hatrack or an umbrella stand or a lamppost — whatever was most likely under the circumstances. Your mind would explain him away as something that ought to be there, as a part of the normal background and therefore unnoticeable.

“But he wouldn’t actually be invisible. You could see him, for instance, in a mirror or other reflecting surface simply because the spell wouldn’t keep your eyes away from the mirror.”

“He could cast a sight-avoidance spell on the mirror, couldn’t he?” Lord Bontriomphe asked. “That’s a static spell, I believe.”

“Certainly,” said Master Sean. “He could cast a sight-avoidance spell on every reflecting surface in the place. But a man has to look somewhere, and even a layman would get suspicious under circumstances like that. Besides, to anyone with even a half-trained Talent, he’d be detectable immediately.

“And even supposing he did make himself invisible outside that window, do you realize what he would have to do? Now you have him juggling three spells at once: he’s levitating himself; he’s making himself ‘invisible’; and he’s closing that window.

“No, my lord; it won’t do. It just isn’t humanly possible.”

Lord Darcy let his gaze wander over the room. “That’s settled, then. Our killer did not go out those windows either by thaumaturgical or by ordinary physical means. Therefore, we—”

“Wait a minute!” said Lord Bontriomphe, his eyes widening. He pointed a finger at Master Sean. “Look here; suppose it happened this way. The killer stabs Master Sir James. His victim screams. The killer knows that you are outside the door. He knows he can’t get out through the door. The windows are out, too, for the reasons you’ve just given. What can he do? He uses the Tarnhelm Effect. When I come busting in here with an ax, I don’t see him. As far as I’m concerned, the room is empty except for the corpse. I wouldn’t be able to see him, would I? Then, when the door’s open, he walks out as cool as an oyster, with nobody noticing him.”

Master Sean shook his head. “You wouldn’t notice him; that’s so. But I would have. And so would Grand Master Sir Lyon. We were both looking in through that hole in the door, and a man can see the whole room from there — even the bathroom, when the door to it is open.”

Lord Bontriomphe looked at the bathroom through the open door. “No, you can’t. Take a look. Suppose he were lying down in the tub. You couldn’t even see him from in here.”

“True. But I distinctly recall your looking down directly into the tub. You couldn’t have done that if a killer using the Tarnhelm Effect were in it.”

Lord Bontriomphe frowned thoughtfully. “Yes. I did. Hm-m-m. Well, that eliminates that. He wasn’t in the room, and he didn’t leave the room.” He looked at Lord Darcy. “What does that leave?”

“We don’t know yet, my dear fellow. We need more data.” He stepped over to where the body lay and knelt down, being careful not to disturb anything.

Master Sir James Zwinge had been a short, lean man, with receding gray hair and a small gray beard and moustache. He was wearing a neat, fairly expensive gentleman’s suit, rather than the formal sorcerer’s costume to which he was entitled. As Bontriomphe had said, it was difficult to see the stab wound at first glance. It was small, barely an inch long, and had not opened widely. It was further obscured by the blood which covered the front of the dead magician’s clothing. Nearby, a black-handled, silver-bladed knife lay in the pool of blood on the floor, its gleaming blade splashed with red.

“This blood—” Lord Darcy gestured with his hand. “Are you absolutely certain, Bontriomphe, that it was fresh when you broke into this room?”

“Absolutely certain,” Bontriomphe said. “It was bright red and still liquid. There was still a slight flow of blood from the wound itself. I’ll admit I am not a chirurgeon, but I am certainly no amateur when it comes to knowing something about that particular subject. He couldn’t have been dead more than a few minutes when I first saw his body.”

Lord Darcy nodded. “Indeed. The condition of the blood even now, under the preservation spell, shows a certain freshness.”

He gestured toward a key that lay a few feet away from the body. “Is that your key, my lord?”

Lord Bontriomphe nodded. “Yes. I put it there to mark the spot when I picked up Sir James’ key.”

“It is still where you put it?”

“Yes.”

Lord Darcy measured the distance between the key and the door with his eye. “Four and a half feet,” he murmured. He stood up. “Give me Sir James’ key. Thank you. An experiment is in order.”

“An experiment, my lord?” Master Sean repeated. His face brightened.

“Not of the thaumaturgical variety, my good Sean. That will come in good time.” He walked over to the door and opened it, ignoring the two Armsmen who stood at attention outside. He looked down at his feet. “Master Sean, would you be so good as to remove this brazier?”

The tubby little Irish sorcerer bent over and put his hand near the brazen bowl. “It’s still a little hot. I’ll put it on the table.” He picked up the tripod by one leg and carried it into the room.

“I don’t see what you’re getting at,” said Lord Bontriomphe.

“Surely you have noticed the clearance between the bottom of the door and the floor?” Lord Darcy said. “Is it possible that the murderer simply stabbed Sir James, came out, locked the door behind him, and slid the key back under the door?”

Master Sean blinked. “With me standing outside the door all the time?” he said in surprise. “Why, that’s impossible, me lord!”

“Once we have eliminated the impossible,” Lord Darcy said calmly, “we shall be able to concentrate on the merely improbable.”

He knelt down and looked at the floor beneath the door. “As you see, the space is somewhat wider than it appears to be from the inside. The carpeting does not extend under the door. Close the door, if you will, Master Sean.”

The sorcerer pushed the door shut and waited patiently on the other side. Lord Darcy put the heavy brass key on the floor and attempted to push it under the door. “I thought not,” he said, almost to himself. “The key is much too large and thick. It can be forced under—” He pushed hard at the key. “But it wedges tight. And the thickness of the carpet would stop it on the other side.” He pulled the key out. “Open the door again, Master Sean.”

The door swung inward. “Observe,” Lord Darcy continued, “how the attempt to push it under has scored the wood at that point. It would be impossible even to make the attempt without leaving traces, much less—” He paused, cutting off his own words abruptly. “What is this?” he said, leaning over to peer more closely at a spot on the carpet inside the room.

“What’s what?” asked Lord Bontriomphe.

Lord Darcy ignored him. He was looking at a spot on the carpet near the right-hand doorpost, on the side away from the hinges, and approximately eight inches in from the edge of the carpet itself.

“May I borrow your magnifying glass, Master Sean?” Lord Darcy said without looking up.

“Certainly.” Master Sean went over to the table, opened his symbol-decorated carpetbag, took out a large bone-handled lens, and handed it to his lordship.

“What is it?” he asked, echoing Lord Bontriomphe’s question. He knelt down to look, as Lord Darcy continued to study a small spot on the carpet without answering.

The mark, Master Sean saw, was a dark stain in the shape of a half circle, with the straight side running parallel to the door and the arc curving in toward the interior of the room. It was small, about half the size of a man’s thumbnail.

“Is it blood?” asked Master Sean.

“It is difficult to tell on this dark green carpet,” said Lord Darcy. “It might be blood; it might be some other dark substance. Whatever it is, it has soaked into the fibers of the pile, although not down to the backing. Interesting.” He stood up.

“May I?” said Lord Bontriomphe, holding out his hand for the glass.

“Certainly.” He handed over the lens, and while the London investigator knelt to look at the stain, Lord Darcy said to Master Sean: “I would be much obliged, my dear Sean, if you would make a similarity test on that stain. I should like to know if it is blood, and, if so, whether it is Sir James’ blood.” He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “And while you’re at it, do a thorough check of the bloodstain around the body. I should like to be certain that all of the blood is actually Sir James Zwinge’s.”

“Very good, my lord. Would you want any other tests besides the usual ones?”

“Yes. First: Was there, in fact, anyone at all in this room when Sir James Zwinge died? Second: If there was any black magical effect directed at this room, of what sort was it?”

“I shall endeavor to give satisfaction, my lord,” Master Sean said doubtfully, “but it won’t be easy.”

Lord Bontriomphe rose to his feet and handed Master Sean the magnifying glass. “What would be difficult about it?” he asked. “I know those tests aren’t exactly routine, but I’ve seen journeyman sorcerers perform them.”

“My dear Bontriomphe,” said Lord Darcy, “consider the circumstances. If, as we assume, this act of murder was committed by a magician, then he was most certainly a master magician. Knowing, as he must have, that this hotel abounds in master magicians, he would have taken every precaution to cover his tracks and hide his identity — precautions that no ordinary criminal would ever think of and could not take even if he had thought of them. Since Master Sir James was killed rather early yesterday morning, it is likely that the murderer had all of the preceding night for the casting of his spells. Can we, then, expect Master Sean to unravel in a few moments what another master may have taken all night to accomplish?”

He put his hand into an inside jacket pocket and took out the envelope which de London had handed him earlier. “Besides, I have further evidence that the killer or killers are quite capable of covering their tracks. This morning’s communication from Sir Eliot Meredith, my Chief Assistant, is a report of what he has thus far discovered in regard to the murder of the double agent Georges Barbour in Cherbourg. It contains two apparently conflicting pieces of information.” He looked at Master Sean.

“My good Sean. Would you give me your professional opinion of the journeyman who is the forensic sorcerer for Chief Master-at-Arms Henri Vert in Cherbourg?”

“Goodman Juseppy?” Master Sean pursed his lips, then said: “Competent, I should say; quite competent. He’s not a Master, of course, but—”

“Would you consider him capable of bungling the two tests which I have just asked you to perform?”

“We are all capable of error, my lord. But… no. In an ordinary case, I should say that Goodman Juseppy’s testimony as to his results would be quite reliable.”

“In an ordinary case. Just so. But what if he were pitted against the machinations of a Master Sorcerer?”

Master Sean shrugged. “Then it’s certainly possible that his results might be in error. Goodman Juseppy simply isn’t of that caliber.”

“Then that may account for the conflicting evidence,” Lord Darcy said. “I hesitate to say definitely that it does, but it may.”

“All right,” said Lord Bontriomphe impatiently, “just what is this conflicting evidence?”

“According to Goodman Juseppy’s official report, there was no one in Barbour’s room at the time he was killed. Furthermore, there had not been anyone but himself in the room for several hours before.”

“Very well,” said Lord Bontriomphe, “but where is the conflict?”

“The second test,” said Lord Darcy calmly. “Goodman Juseppy could detect no trace whatever of black magic — or, indeed, of any kind of sorcery at all.”

In the silence that followed, Lord Darcy returned the envelope to his jacket pocket.

Master Sean O Lochlainn sighed. “Well, my lords, I’ll perform the tests. However, I should like to call in another sorcerer to help. That way—”

“No!” Lord Darcy interrupted firmly. “Under no circumstances! As of this moment, Master Sean, you are the only sorcerer in this world in whom I can unhesitatingly place complete trust.”

The little Irish sorcerer turned, took a deep breath, and looked up into Lord Darcy’s eyes. “My lord,” he said in a low, solemn voice, “in all humility I wish to point out that while yours is undoubtedly the finest deductive mind upon the face of this Earth, I am a Master Sorcerer.” He paused. “We have worked together for a long time, my lord. During that time I have used sorcery to discover the facts, and you have taken those facts and made a cogent case of them. You cannot do the one, my lord, and I cannot do the other. Thus far there has been a tacit agreement between us, my lord, that I do not attempt to do your job, and you do not attempt to do mine. Has that agreement been abrogated?”

Lord Darcy was silent for a moment, trying to put his thoughts into words. Then, in a startlingly similar low voice, he said: “Master Sean, I should like to express my most humble apologies. I am an expert in my field. You are an expert on sorcery and sorcerers. Let it be so. The agreement has not been abrogated — nor, I trust, shall it ever be.”

He paused for a moment, then, after a deep breath, said, in a more normal tone of voice, “Of course, Master Sean. You may choose any kind of consultation you wish.”

During the moment of tension between the two friends, Lord Bontriomphe had quietly turned away, walked over to the corpse, and looked down at it without actually seeing it.

“Well, my lord—” There was just the slightest touch of embarrassment in Master Sean’s voice. He cleared his throat and began again. “Well, my lord, it wasn’t exactly consultation I was thinking of. What I really need is a good assistant. With your permission, I should like to ask Lord John Quetzal to help me. He’s only a journeyman, but he wants to become a forensic sorcerer and the experience will be good for him.”

“Of course, Master Sean, an excellent choice I should say. Now let me see—” He looked across at the body again. “I shan’t disturb the evidence any more than is necessary. Those ceremonial knives are all constructed to the same pattern, are they not?”

“Yes, my lord. Every sorcerer must make his own, with his own hands, but they are built to rigid specifications. That’s one of the things an apprentice has to learn right off, to build his own tools. You can’t use another man’s tools in this business, nor tools made by an ordinary craftsman. It’s the making of them that attunes them to the individual who uses them. They must be generally similar and individually different.”

“So I understand. Would you permit me to examine your own, so that I need not disturb Sir James’?”

“Of course.” He got the knife from his carpetbag and handed it to his lordship. “Mind you don’t cut yourself; that blade is razor sharp.”

Lord Darcy eased the onyx-handled knife from its black couirbouilli sheath. The gleaming blade was a perfect isosceles triangle, five inches from handguard to point and two inches wide at the handguard. Lord Darcy turned it and looked at the base of the pommel. “This is your monogram and symbol. I presume Sir James’ knife is identified in the same way?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Would you mind looking at that knife and telling me whether you can positively identify it as his?”

“Oh, that’s the first thing I looked at. Many’s the time I’ve seen it, and it’s his knife, all right.”

“Excellent. That accounts for its being here.” He slid the deadly-looking blade back into its sheath and handed it back to the little sorcerer.

“That blade is pure silver, Master Sean?” Lord Bontriomphe asked.

“Pure silver, my lord.”

“Tell me: how do you keep a razor edge on anything that soft?”

Master Sean smiled broadly. “Well, I’ll admit it’s a hard job getting the edge on it in the first place. It has to be finished with jeweler’s rouge and very soft kidskin. But it’s only used as a symbolical knife, d’ye see. We never actually cut anything material with it, so it never needs to be sharpened again if a man’s careful.”

“But if you never cut anything with it,” said Lord Bontriomphe, “then why sharpen it at all? Wouldn’t it work as well if its edges were as dull as, say, a letter opener?”

Master Sean gave the London investigator a rather pained look. “My lord,” he said with infinite patience, “this is a symbol of a sharp knife. I also have a slightly different one with blunt edges; it is a symbol for a dull knife. Your lordship should realize that, for many purposes, the best symbol for a thing is the thing itself.”

Lord Bontriomphe grinned and raised one hand, palm outward. “Sorry, Master Sorcerer; my apologies. But please don’t give me any lectures on advanced symbolic theory. I never could get it through my head.”

“Is there anything else you wanted to look at, Bontriomphe?” Lord Darcy asked briskly. “If not, I suggest we be on our way, and permit Master Sean to go about his work. We will instruct the guards at the door that you are not to be disturbed, Master Sean. When you have finished, notify Chief Master-at-Arms Hennely Grayme that we should like an autopsy performed upon the body immediately. And I should appreciate it very much if you would go to the morgue and personally supervise the chirurgeon’s work.”

“Very well. I’ll see to it. I’ll get the report to My Lord Marquis’ office as soon as possible.”

“Excellent. Come, Bontriomphe; there is work to be done.”