Clifford D. Simak

“The museum is wrecked,” he said, “and the Artifact is gone and here are the two of you and I might have known. Miss Hampton, I’m astonished. I thought you had better sense than to become entangled in such low company. Although that crazy cat of yours-”

“You leave Sylvester out of this,” she said. “He never had a thing to do with it.”

“Well, Pete?” asked Sharp.

Maxwell shook his head. “I find it a bit hard to explain.”

“I would think so,” said Sharp. “Did you have all this in mind when you talked with me this evening?”

“No,” said Maxwell. “It was a sort of accident.”

“An expensive accident,” said Sharp. “It might interest you to know that you’ve set Time’s work back a century or more. Unless, of course, you somehow moved the Artifact and have it hidden out somewhere. In which case, my friend, I give you a flat five seconds to hand it back to me.”

Maxwell gulped. “I didn’t move it, Harlow. In fact, I barely touched it. I’m not sure what happened. It turned into a dragon.”

“It turned into a what?”

“A dragon. I tell you, Harlow -”

“I remember now,” said Sharp. “You always were blathering around about a dragon. You started out for Coonskin to find yourself a dragon. And now it seems you’ve found one. I hope that it’s a good one.”

“It’s a pretty one,” said Carol. “All gold and shimmery.”

“Oh, fine,” said Sharp. “Isn’t that just bully. We can probably make a fortune, taking it around on exhibition. We can whomp up a circus and give top billing to the dragon. I can see it now in great big letters: THE ONLY DRAGON IN

EXISTENCE.”

“But it isn’t here,” said Carol. “It up and flew away.”

“Oop,” said Sharp, “you haven’t said a word. What is going on? You are ordinarily fairly mouthy. What is going on?”

“I’m mortified,” said Oop.

Sharp turned away from him and looked at Maxwell.

“Pete,” he said, “you probably realize what you have done. The watchman phoned me and wanted to call the police. But I told him to hold up on calling the police and I’d come right down. I had no idea it would turn out as bad as it did turn out to be. The Artifact is gone and I can’t deliver it and that means I’ll have to hand back all that cash, and a lot of the exhibits have been smashed to smithereens-”

“The dragon did that,” Maxwell said, “before we let him out.”

“So you let him out? He didn’t actually get away. You just let him out.”

“Well, he was smashing all that stuff. I guess we weren’t thinking.”

“Tell me honest, Pete. Was there actually a dragon?”

“Yes, there was one. He was immobilized inside the Artifact. Perhaps he was the Artifact. Don’t ask me how he got there. Enchantment, I would guess.”

“Enchantment?”

“Enchantment really happens, Harlow. I don’t know how. I’ve spent years trying to find out and I don’t know much more about it now than when I started out.”

“It seems to me,” said Sharp, “that there is someone missing. When all hell breaks loose, there usually is someone else who is tied into it. Can you tell me, Oop, where Ghost, that great, good friend of yours, might be?”

Oop shook his head. “He’s a hard one to keep track of. Always slipping off.”

“That isn’t all of it,” said Sharp. “There is still another situation that we should pay some heed to. Shakespeare has come up missing. I wonder if any of you could shed some light on his disappearance.”

“He was with us for a while,” said Oop. “We were just setting down to eat when he became quite frightened and lit out of there. It happened when Ghost remembered that he was Shakespeare’s ghost. He’s been wondering all these years, you know, who he is the ghost of.”

Slowly, lowering himself one section at a time, Sharp sat down on the top step and looked slowly from one to the other of them.

“Not a thing,” he said. “You didn’t miss a thing when you started out to ruin Harlow Sharp. You made a job of it.”

“We didn’t start out to ruin you,” said Oop. “We never had a thing against you. It seemed, somehow, that things started going wrong and they never stopped.”

“By rights,” said Sharp, “I should sue every one of you for every cent you have. I should ask a judgment-and don’t fool yourself, I’d get it-that would keep all of you working for Time the rest of your natural lives. But the three of you together couldn’t offset by a fraction, during your collective lifetimes, what you cost Time tonight. So there’s no sense in doing it. Although I suppose the police will have to get into this ruckus. I don’t see how they can be kept out of it. The three of you, I’m afraid, will have to answer a lot of questions.”

“If someone would only listen to me,” said Maxwell, “I could explain it all. That’s what I’ve been trying to do ever since I got back-to find someone who would listen to me. I tried to talk to you this afternoon…”