The Genie of Sutton Place

by George Selden

  * * *

  I was sitting in the kitchen, having breakfast. Rose was keeping me company with a cup of coffee and doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, which she said meant just as much to her as her first cup of coffee. Maurice was there, too, fidgeting and waiting for Aunt Lucy.

  Suddenly there came this terrific crashing from Aunt Lucy’s bedroom. We all froze. Then we heard Aunt Lucy squeaking, “Oh! oh! oh!”—and we rushed to see what had happened.

  Aunt Lucy was standing on the threshold to her bathroom—I guess she’d been in there doing a last little bit of primping—and staring at the catastrophe. The catastrophe was Sam, lying under the wreckage of her vanity table, covered with a gooey mixture of perfume and face powder. He’d obviously been up on his hind legs, enjoying a sniff, and pulled the whole thing over on him. Half the bottles were broken, and all of them were leaking, and he was some smelly mess! (But despite it all, he was still grinning.)

  I heard Rose murmur, “Oh, man, that dog has really done it now!” Then she pitched in and started to clean things up.

  I was going to begin to apologize for Sam, when Aunt Lucy said, as loftily as a little woman could, “Timothy, I want that mongrel out of here.” I thought she meant, just out of her bedroom. “Lock him in your bathroom. Then come into the living room. It’s time we had a talk.” She was being as formal and grownup as possible, but a fit of sneezing got hold of her and sort of undid the act. I still think it was only all the perfume in the air.

  I stowed Sam in the bathtub and told him to stay there—by now he had his tail between his legs—and went in to face the music. Aunt Lucy was calmer and talked very reasonably. Which made me even more worried. “Timmy,” she said, “I’m afraid that you’ll have to get rid of Sam.”

  “Get rid of—”

  “Yes, dear.” She forced out a laugh. “I’m sorry, the simple truth is that I’m allergic to him.”

  “Aunt Lucy, that’s just the—”

  “Whatever it is, dear,” she interrupted, “I’ve made up my mind.” It didn’t help for me to notice that Maurice was out in the hall eavesdropping. I wouldn’t have minded if it had been Rose I was being put down in front of. “Sam’s a part of your life that’s behind you,” Aunt Lucy went on. “I haven’t wanted to say anything, because I’ve wanted you to—” Even Aunt Lucy couldn’t stomach that word “adjust.” “I’ve wanted you to feel at home here, but those things you’ve brought into your bedroom, bones and that awful little idol—oh, yes, I admit I’ve been snooping—I think they’re downright morbid. I don’t mind your changing the things that I picked out, but—”

  “I didn’t know you picked everything out, Aunt Lucy. If I had, I’d have left it the way it was.”

  “That’s very sweet, Timmy, but—”

  But—I’m not going to go over the whole of the talk we had. It still squeezes my stomach to think about it. What it came down to was, I had to get rid of Sam that day! Aunt Lucy tried to sweeten the sour by saying I could pick out a nice new poodle puppy if I wanted another dog. I tried to imagine Sam with his tail and paws cut into poodle puff balls, but it wasn’t possible—much less funny. There was also some stuff about my not having made any friends in Sutton Place. Which I had—Rose—but I shut up and let her talk.

  The talk ended with Aunt Lucy not wanting to look at me—“Shall I take care of it, dear?” she said, and “No, thank you,” I answered—and me not wanting to look at her. Maurice drove her off to a committee meeting somewhere. Aunt Lucy was very big on committees then.

  The only thing I could think of to do—because I couldn’t think of anything—was to get Sam washed. I managed to stretch out the bath for an hour. He was covered with eight kinds of smells, so it wasn’t too hard. Sam’s always seemed to like baths, too, unlike most dogs. Meanwhile, though, as I scrubbed him down and he lifted his forelegs one after the other so I could get him really clean, I was formulating my first plan … I had to plan a lot, last spring.

  But before I took him into the kitchen, I stowed away all my stuff in the closet. If Aunt Lucy didn’t like my bones and pipes and things, I thought it was best to get them out of her sight.

  By now it was getting toward eleven o’clock. Rose was futzing around the sink, just making up work to do, when Sam and I came in. She knew the crunch was on.

  “Rose,” I began, “I want to thank you for cleaning up Aunt Lucy’s room. It won’t happen again.”

  “I guess it won’t.” Rose was always one for getting things out in the open where you could look at them honestly. “Your aunt told me she was asking you to get him out of the house.”

  “I’m glad you happened to bring that up, Rose,” I said, “because I wanted to ask you something. Do you like Sam?”

  “Sure I like him, Tim—”

  “That’s good!” I pressed in fast. “Because I’m giving him to you! For a present. And, also, I thought I might come into your room to visit him now and then.”

  For a while Rose didn’t say anything. Her face was working, to decide what to say. Then she made up her mind. “Timmy, that is certainly the richest present I’ve ever been offered, because I know how much Sam means to you. But Miss Farr wants him out of the apartment. I can’t keep him with me, as much as I’d dearly love to.” I’d known all along, of course. It was just a wild hope. But wild hopes sometimes pay off. (The wildest one I ever had came later that day.) Rose went on, “Would you like me to ask my friends, if anybody—”

  “Oh, no. No, thank you, Rose.” I couldn’t stand the idea of Sam living with strangers, and maybe so far away that I couldn’t go visit him. “I’ll work it out.”

  In the sticky silence that followed, Maurice came back. It was part of his deal with Aunt Lucy that he got lunch—a big hot lunch, even in summer, he made sure of that—every day.

  “Modom says she won’t be home until evening. She’s been made chairman of the Friends of Retired Librarians Committee. It’s a very great honor.” He toed Sam disdainfully away from under the table so he could sit down, and his eyes picked me over with a smile. “However, she said that I was to be at the disposal of young Master Farr all afternoon. For anything he might wish.”

  “I don’t wish anything!” I snapped. “I can do what I have to myself.”

  Rose put some space between us by saying, “Hey, Tim, I’m cooking Maurice a cube steak—you want one, too?”

  “No, thank you, Rose,” I said. “I’m going down to Greenwich Village. In a taxi!” Aunt Lucy was making me give my dog away, but she always made sure I had plenty of pocket money.

  I went into my bedroom and put on my jacket. When I got back to the kitchen, Maurice’s hot cube steak was cooking, and Rose was nervously doing her crossword puzzle.

  “Say goodbye to Rose, Sam,” I said. He put his paws up in her lap and licked one hand.

  “’Bye, Sam,” said Rose and squinted down into her puzzle. “Now will someone please explain to me just what’s an eleven-letter word meaning ‘to dispose of completely’?”

  Maurice had the answer: “EXTERMINATE!”

  4

  The Great Day

  “What mortal or immortal being craves admittance to—”

  “It’s just me, Madame Sosostris,” I called from the front room. She always goes into her spiel when the bell over the front door goes off.

  “Hi, Tim!” She came out from the back with her usual clothes on: Levi’s, a purple blouse, and the tie-dyed turban. She bent over and hugged and kissed me. “It’s always a whiff of ectoplasm to see you, lad!”

  “How’s business?” I was kind of afraid to start the subject.

  “Oh, the junk keeps moving all right. But nothing exciting. Had the Willy sisters in yesterday. And read a palm this morning.”

  “Anything interesting in it?”

  “Nah! Might just as well have been the yellow pages. You can’t imagine how dull some lives are! How’s by you, Tim?”

  “I have worries, Madame Sosostris.”

  “I wa
s wondering about that.” She nodded. “Your face looks like something left over from a raid by a poltergeist. Come on in the kitchen—we’ll thrash it out over a cuppa tea.”

  I told her all about it. And just as I was getting down to the nitty-gritty, there came the second horrendous crash that day. Sam, of course. He always enjoyed browsing as much as I, or Lorenzo or Madame Sosostris, but he didn’t do it as carefully. It was an old Egyptian tray this time, made of bronze, so fortunately it didn’t break. But there was this big ugly dent in one corner.

  “Don’t give it a thought!” said Madame Sosostris. She waved her hand grandly in the air. “Nobody’ll know if that dent was made today or two hundred years ago. It adds to the antiquity. I’ll jack up the price ten bucks!”

  I love Madame S. But my heart felt like a wrung-out dishrag. “It won’t work,” I said.

  I hadn’t even asked her yet, but Madame Sosostris grabbed me by the shoulders and shouted, “Of course Sam can live down here! I know how much that dog means to you—so he means that much to me.”

  “He’d wreck the place. All the glass—”

  “The hell with the glass! I’ll get rid of the glass. I’ll specialize in metal junk. Besides, when I have my breakthrough as a medium, I’m going to give it all up anyway. Sam can’t damage the Spirits!”

  “Madame Sosostris—it just won’t work.”

  She knew it wouldn’t, too. “Back to the kitchen. I got a crystal ball last week from the Gypsies’ Association of Spain. It turned out to be a dud, but don’t give up hope.”

  “Oh, Madame Sosostris, this is serious! We can’t use a silly thing like a crystal—” The way to the kitchen led through the séance room, and on the way back I suddenly felt Lorenzo’s books all around. It was just as if the whole library had whispered something softly to me. I had been planning to smuggle them up a few at a time to Sutton Place, but “Now,” they seemed to be saying, “now!”

  “Madame Sosostris,” I said, “you remember Lorenzo’s will? His books? He said there were wonders in them—and unexpected assistance—”

  “I remember—”

  “Come on. We’ve got to look through every one!”

  * * *

  A frantic search began. It took us practically all afternoon. And we did come up with some fascinating stuff before I discovered the spell.

  Madame Sosostris found the formula for a love potion and suggested we cook it up and give it to Aunt Lucy, so then she’d love Sam. But it sounded too icky and dangerous to me.

  She also turned up a curse Lorenzo had heard from a Tanganyikan witch doctor on his travels in Africa. “‘May baboons bathe in your blighted blood!’ Boy, that would certainly freeze the landlord!”

  “Madame Sosostris, I don’t want to curse anybody,” I said. “Please keep looking for something constructive.”

  I was going through the section of books that made up Lorenzo’s diary when I found it.

  “Here’s something. Listen, Madame Sosostris. ‘London, May 14, 1938. Arrived this morning and went immediately to the British Museum, Near Eastern Division. Could not locate the manuscript I desired—a treatise on certain psychogenic herbs by the court physician of Haroun Al-Raschid—but did discover most interesting translation, purportedly made by a Dominican friar in 1601, of Al-Hazred’s Necronomicon. Contains much esoteric information. Especially fascinated by following spell, a verse for conjuring the Slave of the Carpet—whoever that might be. Upon trial, however, it proved a failure. Perhaps spoken in the original Arabic, its success might be greater.’ And here’s the spell, Madame Sosostris—

  Genie formed of earth and sky,

  Skin of night, with lunar eye,

  Bone of mountain, blood of sea—

  Come hither, Thou, and wait on me!”

  Nothing happened.

  “Lorenzo was right,” said Madame Sosostris. “It’s as much of a fake as the Gypsies’ Association of Spain.”

  Nothing happened, I mean, outside my head. But inside—it was as if a quick wind blew through my brain.

  “Where can I find someone who knows Arabic?”

  “Oh, Tim, come on! You don’t believe that nonsense. It’s my crystal ball all over again.”

  “Madame Sosostris!—you know how important Lorenzo always said language was. And particularly in spells. Now where?”

  “Well, at the library. Or the National Museum. They’ve got a big Near Eastern wing up there. But—”

  “Can I take this page out of the diary? With just the spell on it?”

  “They’re your books, Tim.”

  “Come on, Sam!” I shouted. “Goodbye, Madame S.! Don’t sell the glass!”

  * * *

  The National Museum has always been one of my favorite places. I caught Lorenzo’s enthusiasm the first time we went there. I love a spot, like the National or Madame Sosostris’s antique shop, where the things of the past that might have died still have a chance.

  There are bushes in front of the building, and I told Sam to get in under the leaves and stay there—and stay away from other dogs, too, because this was a very important day. There was no time for socializing. Then I ran up the big flight of stairs to the entrance. Usually I like to march up solemnly—it feels formal and fun—but not today.

  I asked a guard where I could find an expert in Arabic, of course without telling him why—no sense wasting time with disbelief. He said the chairman’s office of the Near Eastern Division was just down that hall and pointed the way.

  But the chairman, when I told him I wanted a spell translated, looked busy and said, “Try Mr. Dickinson. Basement rear, to the left. He’s an expert on spells.”

  It turned out that Mr. Dickinson wasn’t an expert on spells—as yet—although he did know Arabic very well. His field was Near Eastern crockery. I found him in this crazy little room all full of pieces of broken pots and bowls. A lot of them came from a time much earlier than I was after, but they were interesting anyway. It was his job to try to fit the pieces together. I liked him for the patience it must have taken. And I also liked the way his hair, which was fluffy and white, puffed out around his ears.

  “Sir,” I began at the door, “I have this spell that I’d like translated into Arabic.”

  “Oh, how delightful! A spell.” Naturally he didn’t believe it either. “Come in, come in. But I’m afraid that someone’s been teasing you. My study is crockery.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” I said. “Would you just translate this, please?”

  I gave him the page from Lorenzo’s diary, and he read the verse over, murmuring, “Charming! Absolutely charming!”

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “But I don’t speak Arabic. Just English. And a little bit of Latin.”

  “I tell you what,” said Mr. Dickinson. “I’ll write this out phonetically. You just have to pronounce the syllables.”

  “That will be fine,” I said.

  He kind of mumbled and hummed to himself as he worked. Then when he was finished, he said, “Now I’ll just read it once aloud to—”

  “No! Please.” I took the paper out of his hand. “I’ll do that.”

  “A very curious incantation,” said Mr. Dickinson. “Might I ask who invented it?”

  “A man named Al-Hazred.”

  Beneath his puff balls Mr. Dickinson’s ears pricked up. “Akbar Al-Hazred? The Master of Magic?”

  That wind began to blow through my brain again. Just a little breeze now—but growing. “You know him?”

  “Akbar Al-Rizna Al-Hazred—” Mr. Dickinson’s voice got kind of teachy, but I didn’t mind—“the Master of Magic, as subsequent sorcerers, warlocks, and alchemists styled him, was a man who lived in the eighth century of our era. And he was reputed to be a great and powerful wizard. Upstairs we have a tapestry—the Wizard’s Tapestry, it’s called—supposed to have been woven by him, or at least under his command. In fact, we have two rooms upstairs containing objects that are supposed to have belonged to him.”

 
I’d been in one of them, with Lorenzo. The wind started up in my heart now—strong. “This is a spell to summon the Slave of the Carpet—how strange. The Slave of the Carpet.” Mr. Dickinson puckered his forehead at me and was quiet awhile.

  I got my voice back into my throat and said, “What’s strange about it, sir?”

  “Well—everyone has always supposed that this—fabric, shall we say?—was a tapestry. It’s so absolutely gorgeous! But it’s barely possible that it might have been a carpet. The coincidence is that in the thing there’s woven the figure of—a genie.”

  At that moment I knew. The wind blowing through me had only been hope. But now I was sure. After all, it stood to reason that if the spell was going to work anywhere, it surely would right in front of the carpet. Mr. Dickinson called it “coincidence.” Some people say “fate” or “luck” or “chance.” But there are times when everything fits together, like one of Mr. Dickinson’s broken pots. I knew. And I was petrified! Because anyone who fools around with the Occult Sciences is asking for trouble. There are lots of things that ought to be kept out. But there was no help for it—I had to go on. And it had to be today.

  “Thank you, Mr. Dickinson.” I stood up, and my legs felt as shaky as my voice. “I think I’ll just have a look at that tapestry.”

  “Yes, I daresay you will.” I was out the door and heading for the staircase when he called, “Now don’t be too disappointed if—” But I had already stopped hearing him.

  I know the National pretty well, and I was making a beeline for the Near Eastern wing when this bell went off. I didn’t even know I’d heard it until a guard grabbed me by the arm and said, “Closing time, young man.”

  “Sir,” I tried to explain, “I have to see the Wizard’s—”

  “My boy—” he began propelling me back where I’d come from—“when the National closes, it closes for everyone!”

  “Yes, sir.” I gave up—hope, too, almost—and went back through the Renaissance rooms toward the entrance.

  But then I came to the Fourteenth-Century Florence room. It was empty. The guards had cleared everybody out. I saw this big wooden chest, with carvings all over it. And right away I said to myself, If the lid lifts—yes! If it’s locked, then no … I’m not usually superstitious, but I sure was that day.