The guard shook his head.
“I was wondering what is it you’re so diligently seeking.”
“That doesn’t really concern you.”
Ralph turned back to the files but soon realized that he was exhausted. The presence of a stranger interfered with his concentration. As he kept turning over the sheets he struggled to take in their meaning. Ralph stuffed the remaining files in the drawer in front of him and decided to stop punishing himself—and allow the guard to go and slumber in peace, which was probably what he was hinting at by coming here.
“You’re wrong if you think it doesn’t concern me,” the guard said suddenly.
Ralph slowly turned around.
“What? What did you say?”
“I said that you were wrong to think it doesn’t concern me,” the guard repeated. “You’re going through the archives of the former principal, if I’m not mistaken?”
Ralph walked over to the guard and stared at him closely.
“You’re not,” he said.
The guard produced from his breast pocket a white smoking pipe with a battered stem, put it between his teeth, straightened up, and took off his cap.
“I might be useful to you in this endeavor.”
Oh god, Ralph thought. He’s always had a flair for the dramatic. I guess I’m supposed to faint now from all the excitement. And I didn’t even gasp. How rude.
“Yes,” he said. “It appears that you’re just the man I was looking for.”
The guard looked offended.
“You could have at least acknowledged your sudden luck,” he said, pointing at the rows of drawers with his pipe. “This is far from one night’s work.”
“It’s shock,” Ralph explained. “I’m shocked. I am at a complete loss for words.”
Those were actually exactly the right words that he’d found. The guard sprung up and squeezed him in a tight hug. Ralph stoically accepted the outpouring and, in turn, patted the former principal on the back.
The man stepped away and looked him over.
“Well, well! How are you, my boy?”
He hugged Ralph again.
Fatherly, he probably imagined himself. Dwarfishly, Ralph thought as his chin rested on top of the old man’s head. Old Man, that was what everyone called him. Old Man jostled, squeezed, and probed him, then let him go and went to sit in the chair and get his breath back.
Ralph replaced the last drawer he’d taken out.
“I was looking for mentions of those expelled from the House,” he said. “Whose parents took them away shortly before the graduation. Some of them seemed to have developed this strange disorder, the Lost Syndrome, they called it. Do you remember?”
Old Man knitted his brow.
“Lost Syndrome . . .” he muttered. “That wouldn’t be here. You’ll have to go dig in the sick-bay archives. Rare thing, that, but yes, sometimes . . .”
“Were there any cases similar, but not exactly like that?”
Old Man sank even deeper in thought.
“There were lots of things,” he said finally. “All sorts . . . Can’t say for sure.”
Ralph felt acute disappointment. When you start hoping for a miracle you sometimes get it, and then it turns out completely hollow. What did he expect from this old clown? Even in his better times he couldn’t see past his own nose.
As if confirming his suspicions, Old Man waved his hand dismissively at the cabinets.
“What you’re looking for isn’t there,” he said again, tapping his forehead. “It’s all in here, collected and stored. The fount of memory is inside, and all that is just dumb paper.”
With that he grabbed Ralph by the hand and pulled him to the door.
“Let’s go! I will tell you everything I remember, and I remember everything!”
Alarmed by this promise, Ralph shuffled after Old Man while he, not letting his mouth close even for a moment, clicked the switches that gradually restored the library to darkness.
“You see . . . As soon as I saw you today, I immediately thought: Time to come out! It was like lightning! I simply had to come out, that’s what I thought . . .”
The night-guard quarters, the first room from the stairs, turned out to be a tiny nook stuffed to the brim with mismatched furniture, old magazines, and clocks. The clocks filled all available space on the walls. Ralph’s first impression was that the walls were encrusted with glass plaques in lieu of wallpaper, and he had to look closer to realize his mistake. It was indeed mostly clocks, with a few watches here and there, and even some alarm clocks thrown in. He froze in stunned amazement, studying the dials that surrounded him. None of them worked. Their hands pointed at different angles, some had no hands at all. For some reason Ralph’s memory brought up that endless winter night when his watch and the time itself refused to move, an experience he didn’t much like to recall.
Old Man obviously relished his reaction.
“Impressive, isn’t it? Took me fifteen years to collect. Not everything was salvageable, of course, and then I have some I couldn’t fit here. I’ve got two more boxes under the bed, both chock full.”
He hung the cap on the nail in the door, squeezed sideways between the table and the bed, went to the far corner, crouched down, and started rummaging there.
It occurred to Ralph that he was going to be presented with the undisplayed part of the collection, but when Old Man straightened up he was holding a bottle.
“Someone mentioned that the life expectancy of a clock in the House, doesn’t matter what kind, was surprisingly small,” he said, wiping off the bottle with a suspicious-looking piece of cloth. “That was what had set it in motion. I was only collecting the wall clocks at first. The ones in the canteen and the classrooms. I expect others in my position would just give in and stop putting them up, but I was intrigued. It was a challenge of sorts.”
He proudly placed the bottle on the table and admired it.
“Usually we couldn’t find any evidence of them being tampered with, you see. Then it came to me that watches should be out there somewhere too, and I put a word out for the janitors to be on the lookout and bring me any that they found in the trash. Now those were being broken on purpose. Crushed down to dust, almost. The collection got a big boost. After a while I had to stop accepting the ones that were completely destroyed.”
Ralph attempted to read the label on the bottle, but Old Man switched off the light and turned on a feeble desk lamp.
“That better? The collection does make people a tad uncomfortable sometimes.”
“It is better,” Ralph agreed. “And it is uncomfortable. Too sparkly.”
“I’m used to it. It’s all a matter of habit. I would miss them if they went away.”
Old Man presented Ralph with a glass and pulled up a stool, then made himself comfortable on the quilt-covered couch. The glass appeared to be holding wine.
“What is it that you do here, exactly?” Ralph said.
The question sounded somewhat impolite, but Old Man clearly had been waiting for it to be asked and wasn’t too particular about the precise wording. He leaned forward, clutching the unlit pipe in his hand.
“I observe. I track the situation as it develops. Truth be told, I seem to have missed some things in my time.”
Practically all of them, Ralph thought. And you missed them while sitting in the principal’s office. What do you hope to see now from the night guard’s post?
“I had some theories I wanted to check.” Old Man downed almost an entire glass in one gulp. “That old story kept tormenting me. A couple of years ago I finally realized that I had to go back. And so—here I am!”
It sounded so pompous that Ralph winced. He knew he should try to be tolerant, but Old Man was grating on his nerves. His self-righteous complacency, that idiotic clock collection—Ralph’s day hadn’t been going too great even without all this.
“I suppose you enjoy full access to a lot of things now?” he said. “From this room, I mean. In your p
osition as a guard.”
“More than you can imagine,” the former principal said importantly, leaving a significant pause.
Ralph at this point had neither energy nor desire to feign interest. The pause lingered.
“Ask!” Old Man prompted, leaning back on a stack of magazines that gave way under the weight. The magazines cascaded down on the floor. Old Man pretended not to notice.
“What about?” Ralph said glumly.
“Anything! Don’t you have any questions at all?”
The wine was sweet to the point of stickiness and almost impossible to drink. Ralph felt the encounter moving inexorably to Old Man taking offense and Ralph feeling guilty for having offended him. Old Man desperately required an enraptured listener, and Ralph was crushingly bad at it. He rolled the syrupy liquid in his mouth and managed to force it down.
“I am afraid,” he began cautiously, “that the questions I have are not the kind you might have answers to.”
“Try me! What have you got to lose?”
Old Man frowned.
“Oh, all right. I get it. That’s fine, you don’t have to. I’m not going to push you. I just thought that you might be interested in learning some things. You looked like you were stumped.” He filled his glass again and emptied it in two gulps. Fighting the belch coming up, he added, “I’m telling you, Rex’s grandma is something else. She isn’t the goody-two-shoes she’s playing. I figured you’d appreciate my help, now that you’ve locked horns with her.”
Ralph straightened up.
“What?” he said, not quite believing his ears. “Who are you talking about?”
“That granny of Rex’s, who else?” Old Man looked at him quizzically. “Wasn’t it her that you crossed at the meeting today?”
Ralph took a huge swig of the wine.
“Once more from the beginning,” he said. “Are we talking about the same person? Godmother? Is she somehow related to Vulture?”
Old Man nodded.
“Sure. His own dear granny. You mean you didn’t know?”
“Where did you get that?”
“For crying out loud!” Old Man said hotly. “Where! Same place you’d get it, if only you made an effort and utilized your head once in a while. I used to have this habit, you know, of checking out people before hiring them. And she was the only one who looked halfway professional among the riffraff that your new principal dragged in. Of course, that piqued my interest. People like her don’t all of a sudden come to work for people like him. I conducted my usual due diligence. All of her credentials turned out to be fake. Then I just sneaked a peek at her driver’s license, registered under her real last name.”
He gave Ralph an incensed look.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t even suspect it!”
Ralph poured himself more wine. “Except that’s the truth. It has never crossed my mind. I guess I was surprised when she came in, but that was the extent of it. I wouldn’t dream of checking someone’s papers. Who knows what her reasons were for coming here.”
Old Man looked crestfallen, and Ralph rushed to console him.
“Please understand. Here I’ve always been surrounded by decent people. Like you said, professionals. I probably got too used to it. Her arrival came unexpectedly for you, because it wasn’t you who hired her. And I just thought—great, now there’s someone on that side who looks like she knows what she’s doing.”
Old Man shook his head again, but not as ruefully this time. The well-placed flattery was having an effect.
“Well, all right,” he said. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You young people just haven’t the knack for paperwork, ’cause we always tried to shield you from it. Another one of my mistakes, now that I think about it.”
“Don’t blame yourself for everything,” Ralph demanded in a fit of self-loathing. “I’m not that young. You’re entirely correct, I should’ve used my head.”
Old Man patted him on the shoulder, put away the empty bottle, and immediately extracted another one from behind the couch.
Ralph broke out in nervous laughter and said, “I would appreciate it if you’d explain to me one more time what a dunce I am. Tell me what she is trying to accomplish with her suggestions. I can’t imagine why she would all of a sudden need to show everyone who was the boss here with only a few days remaining until graduation.”
Old Man perked up.
“Yes. Exactly. Few days remaining. And she’s scared witless that her grandson is going to do any of that graduating. Because then, by the terms of his late grandfather’s will, the family mansion passes on to him. So, she would either have to live with him under one roof, or go find herself another place, which isn’t that easy at her age.”
He scratched his chin thoughtfully.
“I guess those two didn’t get along too well. Or maybe they did at first and then they didn’t anymore. Anyway, Grandpa played a nice dirty trick on his dearly beloved. I’ve seen quite a few people do that. How it’s supposed to make them feel better when they’re dead, I have no idea.”
Ralph poured himself more wine.
“What about the parents?”
“The parents? That’s a sad story right there. Mother killed herself at nineteen. Father—now you see him, now you don’t, no one even knows who he was. Grandma and Grandpa shipped the boys to an orphanage with the mother still alive, right after they were born, and haven’t given a hoot about them since. At least they never tried to find out anything about them once they were here. I mean, I don’t think Grandpa ever did care, except he couldn’t think of another way to get at her.”
“You are a genius,” Ralph said earnestly.
Old Man waved him away. His eyes were shining.
“Everything is actually very simple if you get the right information. And I still have ways of getting it, thankfully.”
They drank some more. Ralph had the sensation of his stomach congealing into a sticky blob. The syrup also messed with his head.
We’re having a Fairy Tale Night, Ralph thought. Drinking and telling each other scary stories about the Outsides. Me and the former principal. Or rather he’s telling and I’m listening. And I’m already plastered.
Suddenly a thought occurred to him that made him jump.
“Now wait a minute! I still don’t understand . . . She wants to remove Vulture from the House, right? Hoping that it’s going to break him down. All right. But. They told me that they expected me to make that choice. That I was the one to decide who it’s going to be. Which means . . .”
“Which means you got snookered.” Old Man shrugged. “Or did they guess right?”
“No. They didn’t.”
“They’ll talk you into it, then. Dressing it up like that’s what you wanted.”
Ralph felt cold fury flooding him. Trying to stanch this sudden shivering, he hugged his own shoulders, but the cold was spreading from inside. Even a fur coat would not have been enough.
So all this time, while he was fighting his conscience and mulling over the inevitable standoff with Sphinx, the damn hag was angling to throw out Vulture. And he would be her able assistant in that tomorrow, trotting out every last argument against removing Blind that he’d spend the night digging up. All she had to do was agree with him and then put out a counterproposal that he would have no choice but to accept. Because unlike the Fourth, the Third had no one who could take Vulture’s place. The entire pack would just freeze. It was quite possible that in Shark’s mind that would count as a huge victory in his battle to ensure safety at all costs. And the most disgusting part of it all was how well she’d managed to get into his head while sitting on the other side of the House, seemingly absorbed in her own duties and responsibilities. Ralph shuddered at the thought that the old crone had been watching him closely for the last four years and he simply didn’t notice. Him, Vulture, and everyone else for that matter. She’d predicted Ralph’s reactions to a tee, including the show he’d put up of quitting, and had woven them into her plans.
There was only one wrinkle she didn’t count on: an equally shrewd old-timer hiding in plain sight right under her nose.
Old Man was insistently pushing a restorative glass of wine at Ralph, getting more and more anxious.
“Don’t get so upset, my boy! Buck up! You look pale. You’ll need all the resolve you’ve got to fight the enemy. Do you hear?”
Ralph realized that he’d better take the glass before he got drenched. He drained it in one gulp and resolutely set it aside.
“I think that’s enough for me for tonight. Or I might just go and bump off someone.”
This statement horrified the former principal.
“No! Never! Violence is never the answer! That would be your undoing!”
“No, you don’t understand. I was not planning to kill her. No way. Revenge is a dish best served surreptitiously.” Ralph got up, realized that his legs weren’t equal to the task, and lowered himself back on the stool. “Did you make this wine yourself?”
Old Man was kicking up such a fuss around him that Ralph felt slightly uneasy.
“My dear old gnome,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’m perfectly all right.”
This somehow failed to calm Old Man. He tripped over the kettle’s electric cord and crashed down on the pile of magazines.
“Enough of that,” Ralph said, helping him up. “I told you, everything’s fine. We’re going to sit down now and have a nice long chat. You’re going to share your wisdom and experience and provide advice. And I’m going to listen. And so on and so forth.”
“Perfect!” Old Man exclaimed hotly, steadying himself. “What a great idea! That’s exactly what we’ll do!”
For the next hour, Ralph pretended to be listening to Old Man. To his stories of the tangled webs of intrigue from the old days. He even voiced agreement from time to time. The stories became more and more complicated as Old Man’s speech became less and less coherent. After the fourth bottle, the headache returned and the sense of time vanished.
That’s good . . . that’s nice . . . just the way it should be. I need to get really far over the edge to be doing what I’m planning to do. Really, really far . . .
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