Findo Gask - Gumshoe Glamours, Part 54: Novel by Trevor Hopkins

"You may be right," he replied with more spunk that I might have given him credit for, "But at least I'd be alive and in one piece to enjoy the legal skinning I'd get from the divorce lawyers employed by my shortly-to-be-ex-wife."

I pushed him back on the bed, where he sat passively, cradling his head in his hands.

"What do you mean?" I demanded roughly.

"Garrick said if I was to mention any of his business to anybody, if any of it were to come out, then he'd know where the information had come from. He said he'd track me down and dismember me limb from limb, then make me choke on my own fingers."

I couldn't see Garrick actually issuing such a threat; such crudely graphical language was not his style. But I did suspect that he had used a hypnosis glamour: an old-fashioned spell which had convinced Angus had he was indeed in mortal danger were he to divulge a single one of Garrick's secrets.

There was no way the simple threat of a messy divorce - for a Goblin who has married money, I suspected - would overcome such a deeply-held conviction that his life was in peril. It looked like I may have been wasting my time after all.

"Look," I said more gently, "I can make this all go away. I'll leave you alone, but you've got to give me something in return. I just need a name. A person, a place, anything. Something I could have got from somebody other than you, conceivably. This is your chance to keep your life intact."

Coupar Angus sat shaking on the bed for a long moment, then he looked up and croaked two words at me, so softly I could barely hear him. They were the last words he would speak to me. After that, he collapsed into some near-catatonic state, so that I had to practically manhandle him out of the door and point him in the direction of home.

The words that Coupar Angus spoke were: "Dulelm Hollows."

Now, my problem was: who or what in the two worlds was Dulelm Hollows?

The answer came from Gumshoe the following morning. The name sounded like something in one of the surface languages, probably English, so making a telephone enquiry with the human detective seemed like a sound plan. I left a message on his answering machine; Gumshoe almost never picks up the phone when somebody calls.

After some searching, he phoned back with a report that Dulelm Hollows was in fact a place in the surface world, in up-state New York, in fact, not two hundred miles from New York City itself. A quiet little village, apparently, a real backwoods place - and with a reputation for unexplained phenomena: spooky noises, strange creatures sighted, houses reputed to be haunted. It sounded just like the kind of place a retiring Goblin might set up a hideout.

"Good work, Gamshack," I said, "I think a little investigation in person is called for, don't you agree?"

"Sure," he replied, "This afternoon? Give me a chance to rattle the cages at the NYPD some more?"

I agreed. Gumshoe also reported that it has been all quiet overnight at Chill's Bar. The presence of Gumshoe's heavies seemed to have scared off Rigg and his crew, at least for the time being. Gumshoe had spent some part of the evening at the bar, but had to contend with nothing more stressful than fending off unwanted drinks from Rosie and her staff.

Gumshoe's NYPD contacts hadn't turned up any trace of Rigg himself as yet. Frankly, I wasn't surprised. The goons were probably just local muscle, and Rigg himself had probably jetted off to some other part of the world on another mission.

I did get a message, one I didn't expect. It was from Luncardy. Rather than her usual brusque instructions, this one was lengthy and dripping with intended irony.

"Well, Mister Gask, you do seem to have stirred things up. If you could spare a few moments in your busy schedule, perhaps you would be good enough to drop by the office and explain it all to me."

I went immediately. I know a direct instruction when I hear one.

Part 53

Part 55