He reached in, and took out a card, only slightly larger than a business card. It was black-edged. There was no name or address printed on it, though. Only one word, handwritten in the center in an ink that had faded to brown: Jack.
On the back of the card, in pencil, Abanazer Bolger had written instructions to himself, in his tiny, precise handwriting, as a reminder, although he would not have been likely to forget the use of the card, how to use it to summon the man Jack. No, not summon. Invite. You did not summon people like him.
A knocking on the outer door of the shop.
Bolger tossed the card down onto the counter, and walked over to the door, peering out into the wet afternoon.
“Hurry up,” called Tom Hustings, “it’s miserable out here. Dismal. I’m getting soaked.”
Bolger unlocked the door and Tom Hustings pushed his way in, his raincoat and hair dripping. “What’s so important that you can’t talk about it over the phone, then?”
“Our fortune,” said Abanazer Bolger, with his sour face. “That’s what.”
Hustings took off his raincoat and hung it on the back of the shopdoor. “What is it? Something good fell off the back of a lorry?”
“Treasure,” said Abanazer Bolger. “Two kinds.” He took his friend over to the counter, showed him the brooch, under the little light.
“It’s old, isn’t it?”
“From pagan times,” said Abanazer. “Before. From Druid times. Before the Romans came. It’s called a snakestone. Seen ’em in museums. I’ve never seen metalwork like that, or one so fine. Must have belonged to a king. The lad who found it says it come from a grave—think of a barrow filled with stuff like this.”
“Might be worth doing it legit,” said Hustings, thoughtfully. “Declare it as treasure trove. They have to pay us market value for it, and we could make them name it after us. The Hustings–Bolger Bequest.”
“Bolger–Hustings,” said Abanazer, automatically. Then he said, “There’s a few people I know of, people with real money, would pay more than market value, if they could hold it as you are”—for Tom Hustings was fingering the brooch, gently, like a man stroking a kitten—“and there’d be no questions asked.” He reached out his hand and, reluctantly, Tom Hustings passed him the brooch.
“You said two kinds of treasure,” said Hustings. “What’s t’other?”
Abanazer Bolger picked up the black-edged card, held it out for his friend’s inspection. “Do you know what this is?”
His friend shook his head.
Abanazer put the card down on the counter. “There’s a party is looking for another party.”
“So?”
“The way I heard it,” said Abanazer Bolger, “the other party is a boy.”
“There’s boys everywhere,” said Tom Hustings. “Running all around. Getting into trouble. I can’t abide them. So, there’s a party looking for a particular boy?”
“This lad looks to be the right sort of age. He’s dressed—well, you’ll see how he’s dressed. And he found this. It could be him.”
“And if it is him?”
Abanazer Bolger picked up the card again, by the edge, and waved it back and forth, slowly, as if running the edge along an imaginary flame. “Here comes a candle to light you to bed…” he began.
“…and here comes a chopper to chop off your head,” concluded Tom Hustings, thoughtfully. “But look you. If we call the man Jack, we lose the boy. And if we lose the boy, we lose the treasure.”
And the two men went back and forth on it, weighing the merits and disadvantages of reporting the boy or of collecting the treasure, which had grown in their minds to a huge underground cavern filled with precious things, and as they debated Abanazer pulled a bottle of sloe gin from beneath the counter and poured them both a generous tot, “to assist the cerebrations.”
Liza was soon bored with their discussion, which went back and forth and around like a whirligig, getting nowhere, and so she went back into the storeroom, to find Bod standing in the middle of the room with his eyes tightly closed and his fists clenched and his face all screwed up as if he had a toothache, almost purple from holding his breath.
“What you a-doin’ of now?” she asked, unimpressed.
He opened his eyes and relaxed. “Trying to Fade,” he said.
Liza sniffed. “Try again,” she said.
He did, holding his breath even longer this time.