“You do that. But,” I said, “don’t drown or anything. I can’t stand any more.”
She curled up her trunk and opened her mouth in amusement. “Elephants float beautifully,” she said, and went lumbering off.
I took Maxwell Hyde in the opposite direction, not very willingly. I could feel my feet dragging. He gave me one of his keen looks and said, “Can you understand what the elephant’s saying, then?”
“Yes,” I said. “Can’t you?”
He shook his sprucely combed gray head. “No, I can’t. It’s not precisely a universal gift, lad. Has she told you what Romanov wants with an elephant, then?”
“He doesn’t,” I said. “I mean, she isn’t his. I met her stuck in the dark paths. She belonged to a circus, but it got struck by a storm—it sounded like a tornado from what she said—and she ran away in a panic. She was my third person needing help, like you said.” I’d been trying to think who the second person was that I had helped after Roddy. I knew it had to be someone in Loggia City, but I couldn’t see who.
“I see,” he said. “That’s a weight off my mind. I’d been puzzl
ed to death why Romanov could possibly need an elephant. So you can understand animal speech?”
“Not the goat,” I said. The goat was coming down from among the trees as I said this. It had a spray of leaves sticking out of its mouth and curiosity all over its face.
“Goats,” said Maxwell Hyde, “are a special case. Mad as hatters, all of them. Now where is this thing we’ve come to see?”
“Down here,” I said, and led him off down the pebbles and pointed with my head turned away. “Down in the water.”
“My God!” he said. Then, after some crunching about, “This is horrible! Hacked to death with a spade!” There were watery, shingly sounds. I guessed he was dragging the Prayermaster out of the sea, but I still couldn’t look. “Nothing much to be done except hope he died quickly,” he said, coming back up beside me and swallowing a little. “Who was he?”
“The Prayermaster from Loggia City who wanted to kill Romanov,” I said. By this time I was swallowing, too.
“I thought I recognized the embroidery,” Maxwell Hyde said. “Biter bit, eh? All right, there’s no need to stay here if it makes you throw up. Come back to the house. There’s something I want to ask you about there.”
I set off thankfully and came face-to-face with the goat at the top of the shingle. “Oh, lord! It won’t—won’t try to eat him, will it?”
“I don’t think they’re carnivores, but we’ll make sure anyway,” he said, and he did the horn-and-rump hold on the goat again and ran it back to the sheds before it could so much as bleat. “Go and find some rope,” he said to me. “Bound to be some in these sheds.”
I looked into the shed nearest the house, expecting the smart motorboat. It was just a pathetic old punt now, but there was a coil of rope hanging on the wall beside it, along with garden tools, a saw, and two empty hooks. “I think the spade and the ax came from there,” I said, handing Maxwell Hyde the rope.
He was looking a bit irritable because the goat was jumping up and down under his hands, but he said quite coolly, “Bound to have come from somewhere near. Wrap one end of that round the creature’s neck—quickly.”
I managed to put a loop of the rope more or less in the right place and then watched, fascinated, while the loose end wrapped itself round the rest of the rope and tied itself into a firm knot.
“Thanks. Phew!” said Maxwell Hyde, standing up rather breathlessly. “Active, smelly beasts, goats are.” He walked off toward the house. I looked back uncertainly, but the other end of the rope was tied somehow to the shed door and the goat had already run out almost to the whole length of it. Impressive. “I must say,” he said, “that I did wonder a bit at that child running to the flier all covered in blood like that, but I was a bit tired just then.”
Of course it had been blood. I felt a fool, thinking it had been embroidery.
“Who was flying the machine?” Maxwell Hyde asked me.
“It must have been the other prayerboy. Joel,” I said. “Unless they had a pilot with them.”
“Could have been a boy,” he commented. “Went up in a surge like an amateur, full throttle, wagging about and so on. And where was Romanov in all this?”
“He was in bed. He’s awfully ill,” I said protectively. “I know he was because I was running around inside shutting windows in case the Prayermaster tried to get in.” I heard myself saying this, and for the first time I wondered about myself. I had been looking after Romanov and protecting him ever since I got here, and yet Romanov had seemed ready enough to bump me off for money if he’d decided I deserved it. I wondered if it was magic, a protective spell perhaps, but I didn’t really think it was. I think I just admired him. I said, again protectively, “They really were wanting to kill him. They called him unclean. But all he’d done was give the embroidery workers stuff to block the radiation.”
“So that’s what annoyed them,” Maxwell Hyde said thoughtfully. “Right. I have my own witness that you were locked inside with an elephant in front of the door, and I didn’t spot any blood on you, so you’re clear, I think.” He opened the door, and I followed him into the kitchen as he said, “But I only have your word for Romanov.”
“I can tell you write detective stories,” I said.
He turned round at me in a way that made me almost back out again. “I am also a Magid,” he said, “and it is my job to look into this.” He was full of authority. I felt as if I’d made a loud joke at a funeral. Then he relaxed a bit and said, “But I want your opinion about this first.” He led me to the living room, where he opened the door and said, “Well? What’s going on here?”
I gawped a bit. It was like another shed in there now. The walls were warped, gray boards with green mossy stuff at the bottom, and there were holes in the splintered old wood of the floor. I could see water glinting and lapping through the holes. All the windows were crooked and draped with cobwebs, and as for the two chairs I had given him to sleep on … Well, it was lucky I’d draped a rug on them. They were two rotten old deck chairs, and the canvas in one was quite perilously split.
“I think it must be because Romanov’s so ill,” I said.