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"Okay," I confirmed, adding earnestly, "Take care, buddy." "I will," he replied confidently. Gumshoe turned on his heel and made for the outer door, the hidden one I had just used to enter by. From the inside, there was no disguise at all and the bulky human simply reached for the handle, turned and pushed. I waited inside, listening for the roar of the engine of Gumshoe's ancient but well-maintained Oldsmobile pulling away from the kerb. It would be maybe a fifty minute round trip to get to the airport to greet Glen. After that, all was silence, except for the hubbub of conversation from the bar and the ever-present sounds of the city beyond that. Most humans are vaguely aware of the noises that their surroundings make, but don't really very much pay attention. But, in a big city - like an inhabited cavern underground - the almost inaudible tells the careful listener a great deal about what's going on. In this case, the city was unperturbed - or at least perturbed only as much as one might expect on a dark weekday evening. I relaxed a little more. I made the subtle motions and passes of my hands which indicated to the concealment glamour that I was to be trusted. The inner doorway - more than wide and high for a Goblin although likely to cause skinned foreheads to the average human - materialised on the blank wall next to me. I opened the door and went inside. Inside, everything was small and neat, the kind of space that Goblins would find comfortable especially after a long day in the oversized human world outside. The lights were turned down low - even lower than the darkened storeroom - to the kind of level that a human would consider pitch-black, but more than enough for me to find my way around without problems. Even Gumshoe, who is distinctly squat for a human, would have had to bend down in here. No wonder he was spending time in the room outside. Mayfield must have woken up as I entered, since she appeared at the bedroom door a few moments later, looking bleary-eyed and dishevelled. "Mister Gask!" she cried when she caught sight of me, sitting down heavily in one of the armchairs, "What a relief! I was beginning to get worried. Did you catch Cairnie?" I was forced to confess that her errant little brother had got away from me, despite my best efforts, and that I had spent many of the intervening hours being interviewed by the police after the shootout at the court. Indeed, without actually saying so, I contrived to give the impression that I had spend all of the hours I was away being lightly grilled by the cops. For the moment, I decided, I would not mention the stopover at David's diner, or at my office, or the intriguing parcel which had been waiting for me in the mail box. Mayfield Westwood's reaction to my tale was predictable: a mixture of worry that her sibling was still at large and that she was still in danger, interspersed with annoyance, even anger, that I had not been able to apprehend the villain, and confusion as to what to do to get out of her predicament. "At least we know who our enemy is," I said placatingly, "We now know for sure who it is I am protecting you from, who's the killer of your grandmother and her servant." I had been walking up and down the room while I was explaining, further scuffing the pentangle whose chalk-lines were still just visible on the floor. Pacing a bad habit of mine when I am thinking; by now, I've almost worn a groove in the carpet in my office from such erratic behaviour. But this time, there was a benefit. I caught a glimpse of Mayfield's face in the mirror which hung inconspicuously on the wall by the door, exactly where a cautious Goblin would put it in order to check on sartorial appearance before exiting or, more likely, to ensure that the current disguise was correctly applied and working properly. The face in the mirror was one so different that I almost didn't recognise Mayfield at all. For a split-second, I got the strangest impression Mayfield didn't believe a word of what I was saying. Rather, she seemed frankly amused by my naivety, astonished that I could have got everything so very wrong. The moment passed as if it had never been. By the time I had turned around, Mayfield was staring morosely at the opposite wall.
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Part 61