The Genie of Sutton Place (15 page)

“Imagination, eh?” murmured Madame S.

Then he included me: “It can't hurt just to look at the Wizard's tapestry.”

But it did.

There was Dooley. I knew he was in there instantly—through his eyes. But they weren't burning now, with rage or hatred or anything—they were pleading. Almost as sad as Sam's … I couldn't bear to look at them … And the room was full of gawking museumgoers, all staring up at poor Dooley and not even dreaming what they were seeing.

But Madame Sosostris knew. If she'd had any lingering doubts, they were gone by now. She recognized his face and shot me a wild excited look.

“Do you like it, Madame Sosostris?” asked Mr. Dickinson.

“It's
unbelievable!
”

No teacher can keep from doing his thing when he's got a willing audience. “The filagreed border is of special interest. It's quite unlike any other of the period.”

“How?”

“Mr. Dickinson—” I was wringing out my brains like a dishcloth—“wasn't ‘skin of night' part of it, too?”

“Well, the elaboration of the floral motifs is so complex.” Absolutely ignored, I was, in his scholarly enthusiasm. “That leafy pattern unfolding along the top border, for instance—” He stopped.

“Yes?… Yes?” said Madame Sosostris.

But there are some silences you shouldn't interrupt. I took her hand and squeezed it: quiet!

He made thinking noises. “Mmm. Hmm! Hmm-
hmm!
”

At last I couldn't stand any more. “Mr. Dickinson—?”

“It's really quite extraordinary.”

Through my heart there blew a little breeze of hope. “What's—extraordinary, Mr. Dickinson?”

“You see that green vine—with the red vine running in back of it—?”

“Yes—”

“It's been twisted to such a degree that it almost looks like Arabic script.”

“Oh, boy—”

“It isn't really my field of research—”

“Mr. Dickinson,
please!
”

“Yes, there
are
some letters interwoven into it. Mmmmmmm—it's the esoteric priestly language of the time of Haroun Al-Raschid. Even then it was almost obsolete.”

“Does it say anything?”

“Mm—‘Genie, formed of earth and sky—'”

“That's the spell! The runes of his release.” In the carpet Dooley's eyes changed, too, just like the quickening in my chest. They got bright as lightning. “Read the rest.”

“I can't make it out—this is really amazing!—there's a shadow on that side. Here, just a minute—” Nobody gets more worked up than a scholar on top of a big discovery. Mr. Dickinson herded everybody else from the room. “Sorry—beg pardon—this room is closed. So sorry—get along there, will you, please—we have some repairs to make.” When he'd pushed all the people out, he got a
ROOM CLOSED
sign from a corner and put it on the door. “Now help me take it down.”

“Take it down?” This
was
the National, after all.

“Yes,
down!
” Madame S. and I helped him lower the carpet to the floor. “This will
make
my reputation.” He took off his shoes and began to crawl around the border, peering down at that green vine. “Such a thrilling surprise!”

“You're in for an even bigger one, brother!” Madame Sosostris got the feel of the magic, too, whipped off her sneakers, and started to pad around herself.

“‘Genie—'” he made it out slowly, with difficulty—“‘formed of earth and sky/skin of night, with lunar eye—'”

“Hold it!”
I said. An all-too-familiar voice, desperately calling me, barked up from the floor below. “Don't say any more. And don't translate it. I'll be right back.” I dashed out of the room and downstairs.

Sam hadn't been able to stand it in the bushes one minute more. He'd followed a bunch of people up the museum steps and, mixing himself in their legs, had seen his chance and charged into the huge front hall.

“Dog!”—“Dog!”—“Hey! Stop that dog!”—“There's a dog in here!”

The museum guards were in the biggest tizzy they'd enjoyed in years. Poor Sam—you'd have thought he was a mad vandal with a hammer. But with all those statues standing around, and the breakable vases, a dog in a museum is just about as welcome as the bull in the china shop.

As I came down the stairs, the uproar was on my left: the Roman rooms. The guards were all bumping into each other, shouting, “Where is he?”—“Where's that dog?”—and the ordinary museumgoers were milling around, having fun at it all, and making it hard for the guards—thank heaven!

Something told me that Sam was there … No, not something: I smelled him. He'd taken to using a certain after-shave lotion while he was a man, and it stayed on when he relapsed.

To create a diversion I said to one guard, “Sir—I saw a dog in the Medieval Wing. He had his paws up on the base of the porcelain statuette of St. Sebastian—”

“Oh, my God!”

In a torrent of fear and excitement and thrill, everybody flowed out of the Roman room.

“Sam,” I whispered, “Sam—are you here?”

From behind one statue came a very quiet woof. And above the belly of the Reclining Venus, Sam's head appeared.

“Why didn't you stay outside? I think we've found—” Those guards were everywhere. “Get down!” I ordered, under my breath.

“Hey, kid—there's no dog in the Medieval Wing. You sure you haven't seen one in here?”

“A dog?” I got wide-eyed and cutesy and awful. But I had to keep them away from Sam.

“Yeah. A dog.”

Fortunately a marble statue of a Roman dog happened to be nearby. “Just him.” I grinned impishly.

“Thanks a
lot!
” The guard skulked and stalked out.

“We've got to get you out of here—”

“Mama!—there he is!” Some curious little kid was doing detective work on his own.

The people began to stampede in again.

“Run, Sam!”

Sam did some beautiful broken-field running and got through the crowd. He pretended to be heading for the Renaissance—but at the last minute I thought I saw him dodge off toward Ancient Egypt.

Anyway, the crowd was convinced he was pawing among the Botticellis and the Michelangelos, and that's where they thundered … I'm sure that every single one of them was enjoying this chase much more than the art they'd come to see.

I meandered, very casually, toward Ancient Egypt … Nobody was there … “Sam—?”

“Woof!”—from somewhere behind Bubastis, the cat goddess. She would have been outraged, too, if she'd known that this dog was hiding in back of her granite paws.

“I've got to hide you somewhere safe—”

“Woof!” he agreed.

“But where?” Over against the wall was the marble sarcophagus of the Pharaoh Tut-ankh—I don't remember what. Its marble lid was half off so people could look inside. But they couldn't see anything because it was dark in there. (The mummy was gone, by the way—it had been grave-robbed ages ago.) “It'll have to do.”

I lifted Sam up and poured him into the sarcophagus. He grumbled and wiggled—after all, who would want to be stuffed into some old Egyptian king's tomb—but when I got him down into the darkness, after a few suspicious sniffs, he settled in.

“Now
stay
there! And shut up!”

“Woof,” he promised quietly.

I went back upstairs—as invisibly as I could.

“Timothy!” Mr. Dickinson and Madame Sosostris were wading around in that carpet as if it were the beach at Riis Park. “This is truly amazing. We've found—”

“The spell, Mr. Dickinson! Did you get the spell?”

“Yes. And also—”

“Recite it, please. In Arabic.”

“But in addition to the spell—”

“Hurry, Mr. Dickinson!” I went over to the door, to make sure that no one could watch what was coming.

“Oh, all right. But I don't see why this worthless rhyme should be of such vital interest to you. When I've discovered—”

“Just try.” My voice was being practical, but my heart was already into the magic. “Just do me a favor—and try!”

“Very well.” Mechanically he recited the spell, to humor my whim.

And Dooley shuddered up out of the carpet—in all his genie regalia. His arms, which had been lifted in fury a thousand years ago, reached down and scooped me up, and he gave me a bear hug to end all bear hugs. No magic in it, either—just strength.

“Little Master Timothy! I thought never to see you again—”

He put me down, and Madame Sosostris, who was bubbling with excitement, too, and dying to get in on our reunion, whacked him on the shoulders and said, “Welcome back, Dooley.”

“And this is Mr. Dickin—” I stopped. Because I thought Mr. Dickinson might be about to die.

He was staring at Dooley and shaking like a frightened leaf. He put his hand up over his eyes—as if by not seeing a genie you could make him not be—and the three of us thought he was going to faint. But the scholar got the best of him, and he lowered his hand and said, almost calmly, “You know—I believe I shall give up the study of crockery.”

“This is the man who translated the spell for us, Dooley.”

“Sayidee,” said Dooley. (That means “master” in Arabic.) Then he added, “My everlasting thanks!” And he did a grand obeisance.

“There's
so
much I can learn from you!” The frenzy of knowledge overtook the professor. Not many men have the opportunity of picking a genie's brains. “First of all—”

“Not
now!
” I shouted. “We have to get Sam back into shape.”

Dooley lifted his right hand and clicked his fingers … Then clicked them again, and his genie's outfit changed into a chauffeur's uniform.

For a minute we waited … Nothing happened.

“Did it work?” I worried.

“Behold!” Dooley gestured toward the door.

There was Sam!… More hugs. And laughing. And congratulations.

(Sam told us later that he'd suddenly become a man again, stretched out in the sarcophagus. And clothed, too—which was considerate on Dooley's part, since none of the ladies in the museum had to scream or be embarrassed. By moving the lid just a little bit, he'd been able to stand up. But that scared the wits out of a guard who was in the room. He thought the Pharaoh was coming back to life. When he saw that it was only a mortal man, he said, “Hey, what were you doin' inside that sarcophagus?” Sam looked at him coldly and said—it was just in the air that day—“Research.”)

We explained to Mr. Dickinson about Mr. Bassinger being my dog, and after a few deep breaths he was able to swallow the truth—having just seen a genie rise out of a rug. “Most extraordinary!” he gulped. But then that childlike pleasure that scholars take in telling you something that they've uncovered came into his voice, and he burbled, “But now I really
must
show you what else is concealed in the carpet. It's a veritable library. You see that green vine—”

“That's the spell—”

“Correct. One line of the verse on each side of the carpet. But
now
—that red line in back of it—even more intricately worked—with those glorious purple leaves—that, too, is writing. And far more difficult to decipher. I've only translated the first few words so far.”

“May we hear them, sayidee?” said Dooley softly, trying to damp his excitement down.

Mr. Dickinson squinted into the border. “‘Yet should the—the love-sick fool—surrender the Great Ring—' I don't understand that.”

“This ring, sayidee.” Dooley held up his left hand. “My Magic and my Immortality are melded together within it.”

“Most impressive!”

But Dooley's smile was not at all happy. “From the vantage point of a man, perhaps. Read on, sayidee.”

“‘Yet should the love-sick fool surrender the Great Ring—and should some mortal maiden receive the gift from him—as token of his love—thenceforth'—mmm—‘thenceforth he shall be even as other men.'”

“The true runes of my release!” burst out Dooley. “Woven around me these centuries! Ah, Wizard, Wizard—” he shook his head, but I think it was in a forgiving way—“in your kindness was always cruelty—in your cruelty always kindness, too.”

“Does that mean you can be a man?”

“It does, little master. Indeed it does … The life of man—it lasts no longer than the scent of jasmine on the air … Yet it is sweet nonetheless.”

“It's what you've wanted, though, isn't it?”

“More than the jeweled throne of Haroun Al-Raschid itself! To be
free,
little master—
free
of the bondage of magic and the prison of immortality.”

“No question about who the ‘mortal maiden' is in this case. Rose would jump at the chance to wear that thing. But will it fit her?—it's awfully big.”

“
This
ring fits any finger upon which it is put.”

“You better watch out—she'll think that it's an engagement ring.”

His grin lit up the whole Al-Hazred room.

“Well, goodbye, everybody,” said Sam.

“Where do you think
you're
going?” I demanded.

“Right back to my box. If he calls off my spell.” Dooley and I locked eyes with each other. We'd completely forgotten. “You've got to face up to it, Tim. Only one of us can be a man. If he turns human, I turn dog.”

“Alas, alas,” moaned Dooley. He'd had such hopes. “Halfway between my magic and an animal is where the two of us long to be.”

“Mm-mmm—” Mr. Dickinson had kept on reading the rug, while listening to us talk. “You needn't worry about that at all.”