"Don"t mention it, Bo. It was a pleasure."
Boamund drew up a chair and sat down. "Let"s start again," he said. "Now then, about the Grail."
Von Weinacht made a suggestion as to what Boamund might care to do with the Grail as and when he found it. The rolling pin moved through the air once more.
"The Grail," Boamund repeated. "What about it?"
This time von Weinacht remained resolutely silent, and the two knights looked at each other.
"Don"t think you can hit him just for not saying anything," Galahaut remarked. "Probably. What do you think?"
"Probably not," Boamund agreed. "Pity, but there it is. What do we do now, then?"
Galahaut shrugged his shoulders. "Find the Socks, I suppose. Hey, you," he said, leaning down and placing the rolling pin under the Graf s nose. "Socks. Where?"
Von Weinacht tried to bite the rolling pin and Galahaut removed it quickly. "I wonder what he"s got against knights," he mused. "Is it just us, or knights per se, or what?"
"Don"t think he likes anyone very much," Boamund replied. "Odd, that, given the line of work he"s in. You"d think somebody who spends his whole time delivering Christmas . . ."
Von Weinacht howled like a wolf. The knights exchanged glances.
"Seems like he doesn"t like you to mention a certain word," Galahaut remarked.
"It does, rather, doesn"t it?" said Boamund. "Christmas!" he hissed in the Graf"s ear, and then jumped back, startled. He wouldn"t have believed a human being could make such an extraordinary noise.
"Well now," said Galahaut, with a malicious grin on his face, "that changes things rather, doesn"t it? Doesn"t it?" he shouted in the Graf s ear.
"Get knotted."
"I think," Galahaut said, "it"s time for a sing-song, don"t you?"
It was a scene that Toenail would never be able to forget until the day he died. The Graf, twisting and squirming in his chair and roaring until you thought his voice would crack; and on either side of him, the two knights, singing The Holly and the Ivy, Silent Night, Away in a Manager, G.o.d Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It was the last of these that finally did the trick.
"All right," the Graf sobbed. "You swine, you inhuman swine. I"ll talk."
Radulf grabbed the walkie-talkie impatiently.
"Moo," he grunted into it; then he slammed the aerial down and nodded his horns. Three pages armed with halberds at once set off down the stairs.
They must be somewhere. Two knights and a supernatural being can"t just vanish off the face of the earth . . .
Use your brains, Radulf. What are the knights here for? Suppose - just suppose - they"ve managed to overpower him somehow and forced him to show them the secret hiding place. Of course! That must be it.
The only problem being that the secret hiding place is well, secret . . .
"In here?"
Von Weinacht nodded. "And the very best of luck," he added.
Boamund didn"t quite follow that, but following things wasn"t his forte, unless they happened to be hounds. He was quite good at that, provided there weren"t too many gates and things in the way.
He grabbed the handles of the drawer and pulled.
Socks. The drawer was full of socks . . .
"My G.o.d," said Galahaut, in an awed voice, "there must be several hundred pairs in there."
Von Weinacht chuckled dryly. "One thousand and forryone," he said. "A good idea, no?"
"I don"t suppose," Galahaut said, "that you care to tell us which pair is the right one?"
"Correct."
Galahaut grinned. "Did you ever hear the one about Good King Wenceslas?" he enquired. But the Graf was ready for him. With a sudden movement, he broke away from Galahaut"s grip and dashed his head against the frame of the door, knocking himself out cold.
"Hey," exclaimed the Haut Prince, "that"s cheating!"
Boamund lifted a heaped handful of socks and let them fall again. "Just look at them all," he said. "I"ve never seen so many socks in all my born days."
"Nor me."
"Oh well," Boamund sighed. "I suppose we"ll just have to take the lot, and try and sort them out later. Toenail, get us a very large sack."
The dwarf made a resigned gesture with his shoulders and wandered off. Between them, Boamund and Galahaut pulled out the drawer and emptied its contents on to the floor.
"I expect we can discount the ones with St Michael written on the label," Galahaut said. "Although he might have had a false label sewn in as camouflage. He"s a clever devil, I"ll say that for him."
Boamund nodded. "We"d better take all of them, tally," he repeated. "Gosh, though. Who"d have thought socks could be so heavy?"
"So"s sand," Galahaut replied, "in bulk. Did you follow all that stuff about Atlantis and offsh.o.r.e banking?"
"Not really," Boamund admitted, "all that sort of thing goes right over my head. But I sort of gathered that he"d had the Grail at one time, and then this Joseph person-"
"Joseph of Arimathea."
"You know," Boamund said, "I"ve heard that name before somewhere. Anyway, this Joseph took the Grail himself and disappeared with it, so we"re not much further forward in any event. Not that it matters, really. Once we"ve got the Ap.r.o.n and the Personal Organiser, and we"ve sorted out these socks, it won"t really matter very much, will it?"
"Hope not," Galahaut said. "I prefer things to be as simple as possible. Where"s that wretched dwarf got to?"
They looked round.
"Wandered off somewhere, I expect," Boamund said. "They do that."
"Shouldn"t be any problem finding a sack in this place," Galahaut said. "One thing you"d expect to find, a sack, Probably full of presents. I remember one year, I was resting, I got a job as a Father Christmas in one of those big department stores. Of course, there was nothing in the sack except old newspapers and bits of cardboard."
Boamund looked across at the stunned figure on the floor. "We could try waking him up, I suppose. Sing some more, that sort of thing."
"We could try," Galahaut agreed, but with just a touch of hesitation. It wasn"t that Boamund"s voice was flat exactly it was certainly no worse than a pneumatic drill - but there was no guarantee of results, and he didn"t want to get another one of his headaches.
"Or," he suggested, therefore, "we could find someone else who"s in on the secret. Must be someone," he added.
"Such as?"
"Well," replied Galahaut diffidently, "there"s that awful bloodthirsty girl, for a start."
"The one who doesn"t appreciate Games?"
"The impatient one, that"s right. Bet you anything you like she knows which pair of socks it is."
Boamund nodded fervently. "Brilliant," he said. "Where is she?"
Galahaut was just about to say that he hadn"t the faintest idea, when the door opened and the girl herself came in, She was simply but attractively dressed in an organdie-paint blouse with pin-tucks and a Peter Pan collar and a Liberty cotton skirt in pale lilac, and she was holding an a.s.sault rifle.
Aristotle was losing his temper with the pinball machine.
"It"s rigged," he muttered, fumbling in his pocket for change. "Every time you get beyond three hundred thousand, a little gate opens down there and the ball sort of trickles down into it." He gave the side of the machine a hard blow with the heel of his hand.
"You aren"t using your upper flippers properly," Simon Magus observed quietly.
"What the h.e.l.l do you know about anything?"
"Sorry," Simon Magus replied, "just trying to be helpful. You haven"t seen my wife anywhere, have you?"
"No." Aristotle pulled back the handle and put the first ball into play. There was a short, tense interval while he pressed both b.u.t.tons about a hundred times in the s.p.a.ce of ten seconds, and the ball ran unerringly down the table and into the jaws of the machine.
"She"s wandered off somewhere again," Simon Magus said. "Funny creatures, women."
Aristotle glowered at him. "Exactly," he replied. "Not really appropriate on campus, either, if you ask me."
"Then I"ll make sure I don"t," Simon Magus replied. "Thanks for the warning."
Aristotle grunted and launched into the second game, while Simon Magus wandered through into the coffee room. n.o.body in there had seen Mahaud, either.
Eventually he ran her to ground on the balcony. She had a big pair of binoculars and was looking out in the general direction of the North Pole.
"Something," she said, "is going on."
"Yes," her husband replied. "I know."
She looked round at him. "You do?" she said. "What? Is it anything to do with that quest young Bedevere was on?"
"You might say that, yes. Lend me those gla.s.ses a moment, would you?"
He focused them, and stood for a while; then he lowered them and bit his lip thoughtfully. "Oh well," he said. "Too late to do anything about it now, I suppose."
"What do you mean?"
"It looks rather like I chose the wrong man for the job," he replied. "Do you remember a boy called Boamund? One of the Northgales kids, tall, gangling, unfortunate manner."
"Of course I do," Mahaud said. "Snotty, the other boys called him. Not a very agreeable name, but apt."
"Well," Simon Magus said, "he was one of my Sleepers. This spot of business that"s going on now, I put him in charge of it. He was doing all right, too, until . . . Oh well."
Mahaud took the gla.s.ses back. "What"s happened?" she said.
"Girl trouble."
"Oh dear. I never thought he was the type, really."
"They"re the worst sort, usually," Simon Magus replied. "Anyway, it"s not that sort of trouble. Oh d.a.m.n," he added peevishly.
"Never mind," said Mahaud briskly. "Can"t be successful every time."
"Suppose not," replied the magician, philosophically. "A great pity, though. I"d rather set my heart on this one coming off."
"Put a lot of work into it?"
"Rather a lot, yes," Simon Magus said. "And I thought I"d made sure it was fairly idiot-proof. Still, there are idiots and idiots."
Mahaud thought for a moment. "It"s never too late to well, give him a helping hand, you know"
Simon Magus looked at her. "But that"s unethical," he said. "Once they"ve started and everything. Most improper."
"n.o.body would ever know."
"I would."
"Oh." She stood for a moment, playing with the binoculars. "Fair enough," she said. "Fancy a quick game of Scrabble?"
Simon Magus studied his wife for a moment.
"Mahaud," he said, "you"re up to something."
"Nonsense."
"Come on, I know that expression. You"re not to interfere."
"I wouldn"t dream of it," replied his wife innocently. "You know that."
"Well, then." He glanced at his watch. "Blast," he said, "I must dash. I said I"d give Merlin a game of dominoes."
"You run along then," Mahaud said. "See you later,"
It was an awkward moment.
"h.e.l.lo again," Galahaut said. "We were just going to come and look for you."
"Oh yes?"