The Curse of the Brewsters

by Bek D Corbin
with special thanks to Holly Logan and Hypatia

I awoke to the syncopations of His Majesty’s Third Royal Engineering Corps Marching Band as it used my medulla oblongata as a parade ground. As they rounded the Solar Pons, I could just make out that the chappie on second trombone was flat. Apparently the Sergeant Major was going to keep them at it until that second trombone got it right.

As they were making their third go round the square, Djiivs wafted in with a glass on a tray. “Your pick me up, Sir,” he whispered.

“No need to shout, Djiivs,” I moaned, “isn’t there something in the Code of Solomon about not shouting at a man when he’s on the brink of Eternity?”

Djiivs merely dematerialized, leaving the question as to the exact definitions of the binding that Solomon the Wise had laid on him some 3,000 years ago up in the air. I manfully steeled myself and swallowed the concoction that Djiivs had left behind. A hundred gun artillery barrage landed on the old cerebellum, and the Sergeant Major called for a general retreat. When the dust settled, the 3^rd Royal Engineering Corps Marching Band had cleared out, and my head was as blissfully empty as ever. The exact ingredients and method of mixture for Djiivs’ nostrum are apparently one of those secrets ‘for which mankind is not yet ready’; otherwise I’d have patented it by now, and be living a life of extravagant abandon. Or, at the very least, I’d pay off my shirt-maker.

Peace and serenity once again having been restored to the Brewster abode- or at least coconut- I pulled myself out of bed to discover that it was the ungodly hour of Ten. I say ungodly, as Ten to Eleven-thirty in the antemeridian happens to be my Aunt Agatha’s favorite times for paying morning calls; so, of course, I prefer to be safely protected by the arms of Morpheus during those dreadful ninety minutes.

Still, to be a Brewster is to be of sterner stuff than the everyday mortal, so I began to armor myself against the slings and arrows that the flesh is heir to, and so forth. First, I fortified myself with a Spartan breakfast of four eggs sunny-side up, a triple helping of sausages, a hashed brown mess of something that I have yet to identify (but still, was absolutely delicious), an entire grapefruit, juice and a pot of coffee.

There was a bit of pointed discussion afterwards, in which Djiivs called into question whether a yellow-green-and-purple checked waistcoat was called for on a bright spring day when a circus was not physically in the proximity. I declared that it was a bold statement, a celebration of the Vernal Equinox, which Djiivs informed me had passed two weeks earlier. In the end, reason- and a sober fawn waistcoat- prevailed.

“So, Djiivs, is there anything looming on the calendar?”

“On the calendar, no, Sir; on the divan, yes. Mister Yardley, and his sister Jocelyn have been waiting on you for about an hour.”

“Oh, really?” I was torn between the urge to rush right out, and the idea of shinnying down the drainpipe outside my window. On one hand, Jocelyn Yardley is one of those girls who make London what it is. She’s trim, smart, and simply the bee’s pajamas. To look upon her is to see the Modern Woman in all her glory, and begin to play ‘Lady of Spain’ on one’s heartstrings.

Her brother, Grassy, on the other hand, is a champion fat-head, and I speak as one who has been accused of having more than his fair share of avoirdupois betwixt the ears. Grassy wouldn’t be half so bad, if not when he gets in the soup, he wouldn’t insist on dumping the bisque in my lap and catching the next boat for the Continent. The news that Grassy Yardley was parked in my parlor was enough to make me long for the docks of Calais myself.

Still, to be a Brewster is to heed the call of duty, no matter how thick the chowder. So, I bucked myself up and sallied forth, no matter what consommé might lay ahead. I entered the parlor with a bright “What Ho!”

“What Ho, Algy!” Jocelyn responded, “Any chance that you might know where Drummond might be right about now?”

Ah, Jocelyn was playing the ‘I’m just here to see Drummond’ game again. Drummond is a second cousin by Uncle Thurston, out of Aunt Honoria. Jocelyn makes out that she’s panting for Drummond, but the sly dog Algernon knows that game. She thinks that she’ll be all the more alluring for not being available, and all that rot. Well, I admit that Drummond does cut a rather fine figure, if you happen to like men who are tall, broad shouldered, athletic, square-jawed, eagle-visage’d and all that. I suppose that some women do. But still, she’s here, and not over at Drummond’s digs over in St. James. Still, I played along. “Well, the old egg did give me a buzz two days ago, saying that there was something cooking up in Dunfermline, that he was all in a pother about.”

Jocelyn looked genuinely shocked, “What? You didn’t go with him?”

“Why?” I asked as I screwed the monocular lens into the eye socket for a better blinker at feminine glory. “It was a report of a sinister Asiatic mastermind.” If I seem a tad cavalier, you must understand that Cousin Drummond has a bit of a bee in his tam o’shanter about sinister Asiatic masterminds. Just say something about a Chinaman being involved, and off he goes on a tear about Limehouse, strange drugs, mechanical spiders, mummified princesses, lethal beauties in silk dresses, lost Dynasties, and threats to Western Civilization in general. Once he gets started, it’s best to break out the cards and see if you can get a rubber or two in before he finally winds down.

Jocelyn acknowledged the point, but still protested, “Still, you might have gone along- or at least let me know about it.”

“Joss, old dear,” I pointed out, “it was DUNFERMLINE. What self-respecting sinister Asiatic mastermind tries to undermine the Empire from Dunfermline?”

She acknowledged my superior deduction, and so heartened, I began to ask what they’d called about. But then, I saw something that made asking, a waste of breath better spent hailing a taxi. “Good Lord, Grassy!” I bespoke, dreading confirmation, “You’re in love again?”

“Yes,” he simpered, the gleam of Young Love in his protuberant eyes, “she’s absolutely Divine!” Divinity comes easily to Grassy. If you haven’t met him, Grassy holds the Midlands record for Falling In Love In A Sprint. The last time Grassy fell in love, I had to sneak into an attic to whistle up a spectral floor-creaker and doorknob-rattler, so that he could pretend to ‘save’ her from the whatzit. As is par with Grassy, I wound up getting fined Five Pounds behind it, and, and I can’t show my face anywhere in St. Gervaise’s Row anymore. And all so that Grassy could spend a week making googly-eyes at Eglantine, before she left for Paris with a specious Count of one sort or another.

Anyway, Grassy went on and on about her, in the flowery way that once caused the Letters Master at our old school to heave a piece of chalk at him. Finally, Joss mercifully interrupted him, saying, “But, of course, there’s a problem.”

Warily, I said, “This isn’t one of those plans where I dress up like a sinister Necromancer from the Cult of the Bloody Fang, and threaten the aforementioned Demi-Goddess, so that Grassy can play Tom Trueheart, Stalwart Hero, again?”

“Ah, No.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Grassy, I don’t concoct Love Philters. After Little-Thripping-on the-Putey, never again.”

Joss brightened a bit. “No, Algy, this time the girl’s actually rather fond of Lionel.” Lionel is what Grassy’s called when he’s at home. Joss gave me a look. “Well, it was bound to happen, eventually.

“No,” she sighed, “this time the problem is with her brother.” She gave Grassy a hard look. “Well, if I have to be plagued with one, why shouldn’t she?”

Grassy tried to take over the reins of the conversation. “You see, Algy, Heloise-”

“Heloise is the name of the girl, one takes it.”

“Yes, of course. Who else would it be?”

“Very well, say on, Abelard.”

“Anyway, Heloise is over here from Paris, looking to bring some decent French cooking to the English.”

“She’s French?”

“Yes, so’s her brother.”

“Yes, well, that would follow, wouldn’t it?”

“Anyway, Gustav is a chef.”

“Gustav is the brother, one takes it?”

“Yes, of course. Who else would it be?”

“With you, Grassy, the mind boggles.” I said as I crammed a cigarette into my holder. “Gustav is a chef. Is he under a curse or something?”

Grassy’s eyes popped at this question. “No, of course he’s not under a curse! Why would he be under a curse?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Grassy. Curses seem to be all the rage these days. Heard last night at the Plover’s Club, that Yorkie Spaulding is having trouble, keeping from turning hairy on full moons.”

“Good Lord!” Grassy seemed genuinely shocked. “Yorkie Spaulding is a werewolf?”

“No, that’s the problem. People could respect turning into a werewolf, there’s a bit of dignity, of tragic drama to it.”

“Well, then,” Grassy acted, confused, as was his normal state, “what DOES he turn into?”

“Why d’you think they call him ‘Yorkie’?”

Grassy shuddered. “Oh, dash it all, where were we? Oh yes, Gustav is having problems getting his restaurant started.”

“He runs a restaurant? One of those places where they make you pay six shillings for a plate of snails and some mushrooms?”

“No, that’s the problem. You see, he was working as a cook at that little Café in Chernsey Gardens-”

“The one with the bust of Napoleon just outside the door? The one that got smashed open three nights ago? Gustav had something to do with that?”

“No, he had nothing to do with that, you see-”

“He lost his job because he kept putting the touch on the owner for advances on his salary.” Joss cut in languidly. “You see, Algy, it seems that Gustav has been spending his late hours at the Tyche Club?”

“He’s just over from Paris, and they’re already letting him join?” I asked, not knowing what the world was coming to.

“The Tyche Club is a casino, Algy. It seems that he dropped a packet there a couple of weeks ago, and in trying to get it back, he’s only dug himself in even deeper.”

“Well, why doesn’t this Gustav just get a job at another restaurant, and pay it off?”

“Well, that’s were it gets sticky, Algy. You see, the word’s gotten around in the carriage trade that Gustav’s not only a gambler, but rather temperamental. He’s tried, but he can’t find a new berth anywhere in London.”

“So, why doesn’t he catch the Calais Coach, and head back to Paris? Find himself a position and duck the gambling johnnies.”

“Well ... he can’t. You see, he already owes money in Paris. And in Nice. And Marseilles. And Rome.”

“When Heloise told me about it,” Grassy jumped in, “I immediately offered my services, and-”

“And he dropped a packet at the Tyche Club himself.” Joss finished for him.

“I’m telling you, they cheated!” Grassy blurted. “They had some sort of hex on the cards or some such!”

“Grassy,” I sighed, as Djiivs handed me a cup of tea, “you came in 47^th out of field of fifty, at the Plovers’ Club Card Tourney.”

“But I’ve gotten much better since then! I read a book by a professional card player, and I learned how to read what the sharpers call ‘tells’. I noticed that Sterling always adjusted his tie when he was trying to hide that he had a good hand.”

“And yet,” Joss chided him, “you still dropped this month’s allowance, and left Major Sterling with a great ripping IOU.”

“Major Sterling?”

“The Johnny who runs the Tyche Club.”

“Ah. And what do you expect me to do about it?”

“Well,” Joss breezed, “we were thinking more that you might be able to find Drummond, and have him rake Sterling over the coals for a bit.”

“Though, you might be able to do something, Algy!” Grassy perked up. “You’re a Wizard. Could you, you know…” he twiddled his fingers at me.

“Grassy, I’m a sorcerer the way that Chuffy Havelock is a lawyer. And I wouldn’t ask Chuffy to fix a parking ticket. And he has three uncles who are High Court judges.”

Grassy looked like Aunt Agatha’s basset Wordsworth did, when he suddenly realized that Aunt Agatha was leaving him with me when she went to the Continent last spring. “Well, what about Djiivs? I’ve seen him turn invisible. That would be deuced useful in a card game, what?”

“Grassy?” I said icily, “That’s cheating’. Now, I’m the first chap to appreciate a little something from the horses’ mouth or nice little edge in a sporting chance, but a Brewster does NOT CHEAT.”

“Oh, I’m not saying that he should peek at the other chaps’ cards, Algy! I’m just saying that he could be there, giving the place the once-over, keeping a bally eye peeled for any monkeyshines.”

“Not a bad idea, Lionel!” Jocelyn breezed, “What say, Djiivs?”

Really! If it isn’t Drummond, then it’s Djiivs. You’d think that I ran some sort of referral agency or another. Djiivs cleared this throat, a complete affectation, since he doesn’t even really have a throat. “Well, Miss, I’m afraid that an accusation of cheating from an invisible agency would not only go unheeded, but prompt a quick counter-charge of perfidy.”

Joss and Grassy wilted a bit, but Djiivs rallied around. “However, there is a much simpler and more straightforward solution to this dilemma.”

“Oh? Say on, say on, wise sage!”

“Well, it has come to my attention that while a gambling debt is a debt of honor, most casino owners, like their cousins, the track agents, regard them in more pragmatic light than do their clientele. As I’ve heard said, ‘you can buy more with a real shilling, than you can with a piece of paper where some bloke promises you ten bob’. I venture to say that this Major Sterling is quite aware of M’sieur Gustav’s financial straits, and would be quite willing to part with the promissory slips for a fraction of their face value. Provided that the remuneration was made in real cash, of course.”

“Splendid Idea, Djiivs! You are an absolute Wizard!” Grassy gushed. Then he saw my stormy expression. “Or whatever the proper term is.” He looked at me, his face beaming like the first day of Christmas. “You’ll do it, of course, right, Algy?”

“Why?” I asked. The idea of trusting what little that I had left of the Readies to Grassy galled me. If I had that sort of dosh laying about, I’d go to the track, where I had at least a snowball’s chance in the Sahara of getting it back!

“Oh, come along, Algy!” Grassy urged, “You know that I’m good for it!”

“No, you’re not! You still haven’t paid me back the fiver that I loaned you three years ago, to make a bet on that ‘Sure Thing’ at Ascot, the one that came in next to last!”

“Yes,” Joss purred, casting those limpid pools at me and smiling the smile that could have launched, if not a thousand ships, then at least a battle squadron, “but you know that 'I’ am.”

I caught myself before I melted completely into a puddle. “So, you’ll stand by this?”

“I’ll have to, or Grassy won’t stop mooning about my apartment, lamenting the ‘Loss of True Love’ and all that bilge. Please, Algy, he’s using up all of my stationary, writing the most utterly awful poetry in worse French.”

Now, I ask you, what man who holds the knightly standards of Chivalry dear could refuse a plea like that? “Djiivs! Get my hat and coat! We’re going to the Tyche Club!”

*****

I hadn’t stepped ten paces into the Tyche Club, when a tall, dark, sinister, Continental type hove up in my path and said in a tone that Torquemada would have envied, “Exactly where do you think you’re going?”

“Why Count Mazarin! What are you doing in London? Last I heard of you, you were in Paris, teaching Eglantine Pfinchley the Meaning of Life!”

“Oh Yes… Brewster… I should have known that only YOU would have had the temerity to try and sneak THAT-” he gestured where Djiivs was floating invisibly, “-into a gambling establishment.”

“Oh, Djiivs?” I silently commanded Djiivs to make himself visible. “Oh, well, you’re of The Craft, Count, so you should know how fidgety some people get, when they see a light blue wisp with a head, torso, arms and no legs wafting down the commons. I’ve gotten in the habit having Djiivs here travel incognito, as it were. Keep the hubbub to a whisper and all that.”

Mazarin, whom you may have guessed, was the bird who caught me up in the Pfinchley’s attic. He glowered at Djiivs. “You will not take that thing into the casino!”

“Well Four-Square with me, Skipper, as I’m not here to gamble. I have some business to conduct with the Guv’nor, Major Sterling.”

He gave me a scowl that reminded me of my Latin Master, back at Hoagwode’s, when I accidentally recited that Caesar had fallen in the compost heap. “And precisely what is your business with Major Sterling?”

“Oh, you’re his Social Secretary now, as well as his doorman? Well, I understand, showing a young lady the Meaning of Life in Paris can be deuced hard on one’s pocketbook.”

At this point, the chappie at the front desk came over and asked me my business. Djiivs had to stay in the lobby, in plain sight at all times, but I still got into Sterling’s office.

I’m not precisely sure as to what happened next. I remember talking to Major Sterling, I remember telling him that I wanted to buy up Gustav and Grassy’s notes. He hemmed and hawed a bit about ‘debts of honor’, and not wanting to take one bit of unsecured paper for two bits of unsecured paper. I told him that I was willing to pay in cash, and the next thing I knew, I was seated at a table, and Sterling was bunging cards at me.

I had nothing but sympathy for poor old Grassy. This Sterling lad may not have been of The Craft, but he was an absolute wizard with the cards. Sterling skinned me for the wherewithal that I had with me, and was well into my Readies. He sat there, smirking at me, and I had a sudden nasty recollection of Hobby Hobsden. Once, in school, I had to live for three weeks on paste and kitchen slops because Hobby melded while I was holding kings. Only much starvation later, did I learn that old Hobby was magically marking the cards. But Sterling wasn’t of The Craft, so how could he be marking the cards?

Then, one of the concessionaires came in, and told the Major that Mr. Hobsden was there. Sterling told the concessionaire to show Hobsden to his office, and to tell him (the Hobsden) that he (Sterling) was busy with a very important matter (Me).

Well Now! If Rupert ‘Hobby’ ‘What’s this list of the Kings of Judah doing up my sleeve?’ Hobsden was a pal of Sterling’s, then Grassy was one hundred percent right about the Major cheating, for a minor miracle. Hobby never met a card that he didn’t mark.

I checked the cards with the old Devil’s Eye, and there the marks were, like old friends hiding behind the drapes, waiting for you to leave the room. Yes, it was definitely Hobby’s handiwork. Well, a Brewster may not cheat, but he certainly doesn’t sit still for this sort of jiggery-pokery! Sterling was one card away from Gin, so I melded out as best I could, and caught him with his knickers around his ankles.

After Baffy Barnstable told me what the porter heard, about Hobby’s little card trick, he taught me a little trick that ‘shuffles’ the marks on the cards as the cards are being shuffled. I tapped out the spell as I cut the cards, and Sterling might as well have been reading the Tokyo Times, instead of the London Times. I got my Readies and most of my walking around money back on that hand. Sterling was looking oddly at the cards, so I tapped them back to how Hobby had marked them. I got the rest of my own back on that hand, and a pile of chips against Gustav’s note as well. When I cut the cards, I ‘shuffled’ the marks again, and took Gustav’s note.

An hour, Grassy’s IOU, and a hundred of his own pounds later, Major Sterling wearied of the game. As I tucked away the swag, Sterling showed me to the lobby. “Well, I must say, Sterling, you do run a dashed keen little place here! Elegant accommodations, alert staff, lively play at the tables, and all that. I might even look into a regular subscription for m’self.”

“What you will do, Brewster, is hand over all your ill-gotten wealth!” Count Mazarin thundered in his best Public Prosecutor voice and emerged from the gloom, in a manner far and away too reminiscent of my Aunt Agatha. “Major Sterling, alert the police, and have them come to take this 'cheat’ away, to be judged by the proper authorities!”

At that, I bridled as best I could. I have been called many things, some of them by people I think of as friends, to my face even, but I have never been called a ‘cheat’!

“That might be a tab premature.” Djiivs said smoothly, gliding up beside me.

“Are you threatening me, Spirit?” Mazarin demanded in a voice that would have made the chaps in the back seat of the balcony wince.

“No, Sir, merely pointing out that things are done a trifle differently here on the Scepter’d Isle than they are in Le Troime Republique. Criminal charges levied against licensed members of the Sorcerous Profession, as Mister Brewster is, are directly handled by the Lord Chancellor’s office. My understanding is that their Standard Operating Procedure, when charges of cheating at games and sports are laid, is to check the implements and equipment for signs of tampering. Since the deck of cards that you are implying that Mister Brewster may have tampered with have been returned to the general stores, it would be difficult to determine exactly which deck was used. In that case, the Chancery would insist that every deck of cards in the Club be examined. And if any of the cards were, indeed, compromised, then every game in the establishment would be subjected to just as close a scrutiny. Only when absolute proof of cheating has been established, would the person so accused be remanded to the custody of the police.”

Mazarin was bristling like a fox terrier at a pet fox while Djiivs was saying all this, but Sterling looked just like Grassy had, when his ‘sure thing’ came limping in a nose ahead of the nag that went lame. “Now, now, M’sieur leCompte, it was nothing like that.” Sterling said, laying on the old oil with a roller. “It was only a friendly game. So, I lost. What of it? It’s not the money, it’s the thrill of a game well played, and all that.”

Mazarin ignored him, and put his face up so close to mine that I could see that he really needed to trim his nose hairs. “Brewster, you may have fooled these good people with your charade of being the amiable fool, but ‘I’ refuse to have the flannel pulled over my eyes.”

“Wool.” I said.

“What?”

“It’s not ‘flannel over your eyes’, it’s ‘wool over your eyes’.”

“What of it?” He roared, “You are still the sheep in wolf’s clothing!”

“ ‘Wolf in sheep’s clothing’.”

“SEE? He admits it!” he shouted to the lobby. Then he aimed that nose of his at me again, and I could see the fronds waving in the breeze. “Know this, Brewster. I know you for what you really are. A monster, a fetid sinkhole of iniquity, a master of subtle manipulation who hides behind others, playing the insipid dolt even as he plans his next insidious move. I know what you really are, Brewster, and know this- I will bring you to justice!" With that, he pulled on an opera cape with a flourish, put on a topper and stormed out of the club.

Really! An opera cape and topper, at Four in the postmeridian?

Major Sterling was all apologies and excuses for the Count, and he offered to pay for the cab home. Once we were ensconced and in transit, I said to Djiivs, “Deuced good wheeze, that bosh about the Chancellor’s office. But how did you know that Major Sterling was cheating?”

“Well, before you finished with the Major, I saw Mister Hobsden enter the club. He noticed me, and had several rather emphatic words with Count Mazarin, in which your name came up rather loudly several times. Recalling Mr. Hobsden from that time down in Torquay, I remembered that Mr. Hobsden seemed to be inordinately fond of blaming you for his own misdeeds. And from your vastly entertaining and informative raconteurages about Mr. Hobsden’s schoolboy pranks, I gathered that young Mr. Yardley was the victim of the same sort of prank. I also gathered, once you came out merry rather than befoggled, that you’d turned Mr. Hobsden’s little ploy against Major Sterling, as Mr. Barnstable had taught you. It struck me that Mr. Hobsden had taken advantage of the situation to set the Count, whom I understand has a keen sense of justice, if poor judgement in personalities, on your trail, so that the Count wouldn’t be paying attention to any of Mr. Hobsden’s own little merriments. I also suspect that Mr. Hobsden may have steered Mr. Yardley to the Tyche Club with an aim towards bringing you here, so that Major Sterling could reduce you to debt, and you might be forced to cede your ownership of me over to Mr. Hobsden.”

“By Jove, Djivvs! The Bounder!” Djiivs is, as I have said on many a trying occasion, a treasure, a wonder and a salvation. Many is the time that I have blessed the day that I purchased the whatzit that King Solomon the Wise bound him into, all those years ago. But there is a problem in having as bright a feather in your cap as Djiivs. Namely, there are no end of blokes trying to snatch the feather off your cap, and maybe take your cap and head along with it! Hobby Hobsden has been trying to lever Djiivs out from under me, ever since he first heard about Djiivs. That bird Mazarin even once came up to me and flat out demanded that I just hand Djiivs over to him, in the name of Righteousness, or some such drivel. Even Cousin Drummond, who is normally the last chap that I’d suspect of persiflage, has made the odd suggestion in the direction that Djiivs might be safer in his hands. Really! I know that finding a good valet, who cleans, washes, cooks, mixes drinks and fixes an absolutely bung-ho hangover cure is almost impossible these days, but really!

*****

Back at the digs on Long Street, I called Grassy and told him the good news. He burbled insanely for a few minutes, and said that he’d bung around Heloise and Gustav. I asked him if he wouldn’t bung Jocelyn around as well, and he said ‘bung ho’, and I said ‘bung ho’, and we all said ‘bung-ho’ together.

As good as his word for once, Grassy had the lot of them over an hour later. A rather hefty young lady, whom I took to be the allegedly divine Heloise, sailed in, splashing joie de vivre about with a fire bucket. An equally hefty cove with a landmark mustache- that is to say, you could navigate your way around a strange party by it; ‘two chaps to the left of the mustache’, that sort of thing- followed in. I took him to be the Gustav under dispute. Well, if Heloise is any indication, he must be an absolutely ripping cook. And Jocelyn, sweet Jocelyn, brought up the rear, just after Grassy himself.

After Heloise had finished gushing effusive thanks for liberating her brother from indebtedness vile, Joss asked, “Are you sure that Drummond didn’t help you with this, Algy?”

Well, I never! I mean, I know that my friends like to twit on about me being halfway to the village idiot, but really! Well, V. Algernon Brewster is not one to sit by and let that pass lightly. I regaled them with the story of how Major Sterling tried to pull Hobby Hobsden’s wheeze with the marked cards, and how I turned it back on him.

“See?” Grassy burbled at Heloise, “See? I told you that there was something off the conk about that game! See?”

“Yes.” Joss drawled, “So, when are you going to inform the Chancery about it, Algy?”

“The Chancery, Joss?”

“Well, if it IS a crooked gambling joint, shouldn’t something be done about it?”

“A day late and a dollar short, as the Americans would say, Miss.” Djiivs informed her as he passed around the elixir vitae. “Informed sources tell me that as soon as Mr. Brewster left, Major Sterling discovered an infestation of rats in the cellar of the Tyche Club. Citing reasons of concern for health and sanitation, he immediately shut down the club and put the entire staff on notice. With the bad repute that the club would gather from such a development, I doubt that it is likely that the Tyche Club will open again, any time soon.”

“And the Major himself had urgent business to attend to, in, say… Paris?” Joss asked with the devil dancing in her eyes.

“America, actually.” Djiivs said in a sepulchral tone.

With this news, Gustav was beside himself with glee. He gave me a completely unwarranted kiss on both cheeks and pumped my hand as he swore up one wall, across the roof and down the other wall, that he would pay me back every penny, no matter what he had to do in order to pay it back. Once he’d found a position, of course.

“What a felicitous coincidence then, M. DuBrec. Mister Brewster’s club, the Plovers, is sadly in need of improving the bill of fare in the dining hall. I took the liberty of informing the Secretary that you had entered into Mister Brewster’s service, and that he was, as it were, ‘loaning you out’ to the club. The Club will remunerate Mr. Brewster, and pass on your wages- less a fraction to pay the gambling debt, of course.”

Gustav’s face almost disappeared into his mustache. “WHAT? A Men’s Club? I am supposed to ladle out bland food choked in grease to a gaggle of blithering nincompoops? This is outrageous! I refuse to accede to this chattel slavery!”

Djiivs remained as bland as tepid porridge. “That is most distressing, M. DuBrec. Especially since you just now shook hands with Mr. Brewster and declared in no uncertain terms that you would do whatever you had to, to repay the debt. And, I would call your attention to the Seal of Thoth dangling from Mr. Brewster’s watch-chain.”

Really? I hadn’t realized that I was wearing the old Hex-fob! “By making that promise, as Mr. Brewster was wearing the Seal of Thoth, you have entered into a Sorcerer’s Contract. I’m afraid that the penalty for breaking a Sorcerer’s Contract is to assume the burden of all the Sorcerer’s sins onto your own karmic debt.”

“I was lured and connived into it!”

“Sir, Mr. Brewster did not ask you for any compensation, and the terms of the Contract were strictly of your own choosing.”

Gustav looked at me, and I concurred that this was, indeed, the raw, pulsing truth of the matter. Gustav and Heloise departed, parceling out icy glares at all concerned.

Grassy wasn’t that happy, either. “Really, Algy! That was a cold bit of skullduggery, if ever there was one!”

“What are you talking about, Grassy?”

“Sticking Gustav up like that! And in front of Heloise, no less!”

“It would have been better, if he’d done it when her back was turned?” Joss asked in that Noel Coward way of hers.

“Grassy,” I said sitting back in the favorite chair of leisure, “you heard Djiivs. Gustav dug his own grave with his own words, climbed right in, and pulled the headstone right on top of himself.”

“Even so,” Grassy said sulkily as he paced about, his hands in his pockets, “in front of Heloise!” He bucked up and turned to me. “At any rate, what about my note?”

“What about it?”

“Well, hand it over, like a good fellow!”

“Why should I? It’s worth a hundred pounds!”

“But it’s mine!”

“Not anymore it isn’t!”

“But you admitted yourself, Major Sterling was cheating!”

“Algy,” Joss butted in, “just give ME the note. You know that I’m good for it, we’ve already established that.” She stretched out an elegant hand for the promissory note.

Well, dash it all, what’s a Cove to do? With her sitting there, all Belle of the Ball and everything? I handed over the note.

“Well, just to balance everything out, Algy,” Joss breezed, “you can sample Gustav’s cooking tomorrow, when Lionel buys you lunch at the Plover’s tomorrow. I’d invite myself along as well, but that beastly club of yours won’t admit women. Come along, Grassy!” And with that, she sailed out of the apartment, with Grassy in tow.

*****

I came in, back from lunch the next day and peckish for tea. “Hail to thee, Blithe Spirit!” I sang to Djiivs. “You never were a Bird/ that from Heaven, or near it, something, something, something.”

“Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!” Djiivs gently corrected me. “ ‘Bird thou never wert/ That from Heaven, or near it/, pourest thy full heart/ in profuse strains of unpremeditated art.’ The poet, Shelly, ‘To a Skylark’.”

“And all the more apropos for it.” I returned, my good mood in no way diminished for being reminded of being conked by my Poetry Master for confusing Wordsworth and Coleridge. “For, by means of the profuse strains of your unpre-whatever-you-said Art, I have come from a triumph- yes, Djiivs, a Triumph!- at the Plovers. Gustav is ensconced in the kitchen and working with a will, working with a wit, working as a Yankee hustles, just for the love of it. Not only was I provided with a luncheon to sing of, gratis. Not only was it generally acknowledged that I was to credit for this delectable bounty. But, I actually had a luncheon story that didn’t end with me standing on the dining room table in football cleats, with my trousers about my ankles, trying to explain to the Archbishop why I was carrying a stolen goat. Djiivs, your Master knows that rarest of blossoms, content.”

But, alas, Djiivs was forced to shoot down the cloud that I was floating on, with double-aught buckshot. “Sir, Mrs. Brinkley and Lady Skelding are here. They’ve been waiting on you, for the better part of an hour.”

“Aunt Margery? Aunt Dorothy? What it the name of all that’s Holy are they doing HERE? Together?”

“I have asked them that, couched of course, in more respectful terms. Still, they have declined to inform me.”

You might say that I was rattled, and you’d be right. Any cove that knows me, knows that I am plagued by a host of Aunts, the sight of whom would have inspired Horatius to jump off the bridge, Rome be damned. Individually, they’re frightful enough, but working in concert, they form a phalanx that, at the sight of which, even Lord Cardigan would have said, ‘Double check these orders, this can’t be right.’

“Aunt Margery? Aunt Dorothy?” I checked carefully with Djiivs. “Well, Aunt Agatha isn’t here, is she?”

“No, I’m afraid that Mrs. Lestrade was unable to make it.”

Well, thank my namesake saint for that, whether he ever actually existed or not! The Aunts that showed up were daunting enough as it was, without Aunt Agatha casting a further pall on what had been an absolutely glorious day. Aunt Margery is the sort of woman who likes picking people apart, to see what makes them tick, rather like a wind-up clock. Remembering what happened to the clocks that I took apart this way, Aunt Margery tends to make me rather nervous. And Aunt Dorothy is an absolutely lovely woman, simply top-ho. Well, except possibly for that unsettling scent of bitter almonds that seems to follow her about. But Aunt Agatha? It is widely rumored that Aunt Agatha had once been bitten by a werewolf. The werewolf died of it.

Still, to be a Brewster, is to be made of sterner stuff, so I steeled myself and forged bravely forth into the fray. “What Ho, Aunt Dorothy, Aunt Margery!” I was about to offer some trivial pleasantry to set a genial mood, but the aged female relations weren’t in sight to receive them. I was about to go back to chide Djiivs for almost ruining a perfect day with a such a vile wheeze, when Aunt Margery came out of the inner sanctum, the ultimate haven and asylum from the slings and arrows of outrageous relation. She was saying in a loud and carrying voice, “No, it’s not in there, I’m sure! I tell you, I think that he just went and LOST the demmed thing, and he won’t own up to it!” She shut like a trap when she saw me.

Then Aunt Dorothy came out of the other ultimate haven and asylum and so for and so on, saying, “No, no, Margery! He couldn’t control Djiivs if he didn’t know exactly where it was! He-” Then she saw me. “Oh, there you are at last, Algy! It’s well about time that you got here.”

They were no doubt tossing the place, looking for Djiiv’s binding object. Whomever holds the item in question, controls the djinn, and all that. Now, most people, if they found aged relations ransacking their digs looking to snaffle their (the party of the first part’s) most prized possession, would be put out, to say the least. But not V. Algernon Brewster! The one accomplishment that I can truly call my own is that, despite being widely and roundly dismissed as an idiot, I have contrived to hide the binding object in such a cunningly devious place that it can’t be found. Well, by anyone else, that is. “Lose your keys?” I asked innocently.

“Don’t be tiresome, Algy.” Aunt Margery sniffed. “We are here on a matter of the utmost importance.”

“Algy,” Aunt Dorothy said as she got into a chair as if she were mounting a skittish hunter, “a terrible tragedy has befallen.”

“Eudora Fenton has come back from India, and has decided to press the marriage contract?” I said, icy fingers of pure dread clutching at my heart.

“I said a tragedy, Algy. No, your Aunt Ernestine has died.”

Well, I was well and truly floored. Aunt Ernestine, actually great-Aunt-Ernestine, was easily the true proof that greatness once flowed through the Brewster veins. Aunt Ernestine was the sort of relation that, by and large, only exists in Boy’s Own Adventure books; the dynamic adventurous aunt who is constantly going on safari, or visiting the Vizhnu Llama in Tibet, or climbing the pyramids, and such as that. Still, the fact that she was rarely, if ever, in the metropolis to sit in sour judgement on nephews, was what endeared her the most to me. “What? I always thought that Aunt Ernestine would marshal on until Gabriel warmed up for the last call! How did it happen?”

“She was climbing the east face of the Matterhorn. According to the survivors, they were scaling a sheer face, when some sort of jealous rivalry between Graf Von Dachenhurst and some Canadian mining millionaire for the attentions of your Great-aunt flared into fisticuffs. They were grappling, as the lead climber was trying to fix the piton. The fools knocked the lead climber off, and, well, the rest of the party was all tied together with a rope.”

“Ah well, yes, that is how Aunt Ernestine would go.” Yes, Aunt Ernestine was ninety if she was a minute, and not only was she was lively as a goat, but she made all the old goats jump and caper like kids. She was one of those ageless beauties, before old age caught up with her, no doubt heaving from lack of breath. Even then, she had a sort of silver-haired elegance that sort of makes one think that the Golden Years might not be all that bad.

Even as I said ‘Sic Transit Ernestine Mundi’ in my heart, a vile thought came to me. “This isn’t going to turn into one of those nasty inheritance tussles, with everyone who shared so much as a cup of tea with Aunt Ernestine popping out of nowhere and claiming the Eye of the Idol, is it?”

“No, no,” Aunt Dorothy consoled me, “aside from a raft of comparatively reasonable bequests, Ernestine’s will is quite straightforward.”

Now, that did surprise me. Aunt Ernestine had a pretty nice sized packet. Trips to the Amazon don’t exactly come cheap, after all. And when that large a boodle of the spending stuff drops on the field, usually there’s a pretty stiff pile of people looking to pick up the ball. “That’s odd. I don’t recall Aunt Ernestine as having any children.”

“She didn’t.” Aunt Margery growled, “She was always too busy, galloping around the globe like a horse without a rider.”

“Well then! If it’s all settled, then who hit the jackpot, as it were?”

“Algy,” Aunt Dorothy said, as if trying to get a dog to understand that, No she doesn’t want to play fetch anymore, “We aren’t here about Ernestine’s inheritance. Although, a legacy of sorts is the heart of the matter.”

“Legacy?”

“Algy,” Aunt Margery said, in the way that dramatic actresses use when they’re about to announce that the ingenue is actually the lost long Duchess of Somesuch-Or’another, “your Aunt Ernestine was the unfortunate custodian of the Curse of the Brewsters.”

“We have a curse?”

“Don’t be such an abysmal chump, Algy! Of course we have a curse! Every family with any claim to any sort of breeding has a curse, or at the very least, a ghost! And we have both!”

“Well then, why wasn’t I told about this bally curse?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Algy. Of course you were told.”

“I’m afraid not, Aunt Margery. This is the absolute first that I’ve heard of any curse. Heard of the ghost, of course. Sir Leonard the Drunkard, who got trapped with the claret, when they bricked over the old wine cellar. But not even so much as a hushed whisper in a cocked ear about any curse.”

“You were told, and you simply forgot it, in one of your drunken binges.” The aged relation said repressively.

“Well then, let’s assume that I have absolutely NO idea as to what you’re talking about, and you tell me what this curse is, and what you want me to do about it.”

“Finally! It’s about time that something that vaguely resembled sense came from that mouth of yours, Algy! Your cousin, Desmond, Augustus and Gwendolyn’s boy, has inherited the curse.”

“WHAT?” I shouted, genuinely shaken- Yes, Shaken!- to the core. Cousin Desmond is a right enough bird, and I wish him nothing but the best, but the real thing of it is that, dash it all, he’s the bloke in charge of the Brewery! Whilst we Brewsters do own property, a few businesses, not to mention the Sorcery practices, and of course the usual raft of investments and so on, the beating heart of the Brewster fortune is the Brewery. That brewery is the pride and joy of both the county and the Brewster family. Maiden Aunts, who might normally be tempted into the insidious clutches of tea-totaling, will heft a pint of our own with pride. And matters of finance and family pride aside, there is a genuine concern for the Nation. While we produce a Dark, a Bitter and a Lager that can stand tall and proud on their own merits, our brewery produces Alembic’s Own Stout, the Beer without Peer. The tillman at his plow and the laborer at his mill can both be calm, knowing that a pint of Alembic’s Own Stout is waiting for them at the local, comes the end of a hard day. If the Brewery stopped production, the Midlands might be thrown into revolution, anarchy and chaos. “This bally curse hasn’t done anything to the brewery, has it?”

“Oh, no, no!” the a.r. reassured me, “If it had, we’d be up at Pelham Court, seeing to it right away! No, it’s bad, but it’s not THAT bad.”

“But Desmond’s the chap in charge of the works! Uncle Gus as much as said that he couldn’t run the place without Desmond. It won’t… impede… him, or anything, from keeping the place up to snuff?”

Aunt Dorothy looked pained. “Well now, you’ve put your finger on the very problem, Algy. You see, we just put a packet down on renovating the brewery, and the system is still very new. It’s increased production by 35%, and we don’t have to worry about workers falling into the vats anymore. But Desmond’s the only person who really knows how it all works! Augustus was a dab hand with the old set of works, but we NEED Desmond with the new one. And, yes, I’m afraid that the curse will definitely put a severe crimp in Desmond’s ability to run the brewery.”

“It won’t do his fiancée any good, either.” Margery muttered.

“Very well, what do you want me to do?” I asked, eyes steely, shoulders set, visage grim.

“Why, Algy!” Aunt Dorothy cried, “I’ve never seen you so determined! You may actually comprehend the urgency of the matter!”

“Urgency?” I echoed, “Emergency, rather!” Indeed, Emergency! To place Alembic’s Own Stout between your teeth, is to know that in this vast mumble-jumble world, there are at least a few good men who are still doing God’s work. For Alembic’s Own Stout, I would even kiss Aunt Agatha. “But, what do you need Me for?”

“Are you trying to weasel out, already?” Aunt Margery asked with asperity.

“You mistake me, Aunt Margery. I’m not trying to dodge any bullets, I’m just trying to understand what you need me for. I mean, Curses are deuced tricky things, and at Hoagwode’s they always taught us that if you don’t bally well know exactly what you’re doing, leave them alone, or they’ll bite you where you’re tender. There are at least a dozen members of the family better suited to giving this curse the old bung-ho than I am, both of yourselves included.” Honest Injun, and no false modesty there. It’s well known that the only reason that I’m a sorcerer is that almost everyone else in my branch of the Clan is, or at least gives it the old school try. Rather like one of those medical families, the kind where you say, ‘Excuse me, Dr Crowther’, and seven chaps ask you to cough. “I’m more than game to pitch in a crisis, but what am I supposed to DO?”

Aunt Dorothy nodded. “A sensible question, for a wonder. Algy, what we want you to do is beetle on down to Pelham Court, and ‘show the family colors’ as it were. This blasted curse dropped on us out of the clear blue sky, and everyone competent is up to the elbows in things they can’t just walk away from. Even Margery and I will need a few days to tie up a few loose ends, before we can get down there. And I haven’t the slightest idea of what happened to Drummond-”

“He’s in Amsterdam.” I informed her. An informed aunt is an aunt who’s not screaming at you for not telling her.

“What the Devil is he doing in Holland?” Aunt Margery asked, grasping for straws of sanity, and finding none.

“Well, he went to Dunfermline, up in Scotland, checking out a report of a sinister Asiatic mastermind.”

Aunt Dorothy let out an exasperated noise. “And how much is it going to cost us?”

“Haven’t the foggiest. Anyway, he had to catch a ferry for the Continent, and he wired me from Amsterdam, wondering if I couldn’t bung a few pounds his way, for expenses and cheese.”

“Give me the telegram.” Aunt Margery snapped. “We will take care of this, and get Drummond back here in a trice. As for you, you young hound, all that you have to do is go to Pelham Court, hold a few hands, keep them from going into palpitations, and prevent them from doing anything stupid. Which, for your sake, means doing anything other than waiting for the professionals to arrive.”

Ah, well, at least I’m sure that I can do that. Much relieved, I asked, “So, what do I tell them? Do you have any ideas of what you’re going to do?”

Aunt Margery fixed me with an eye that could have sunken the Titanic. “Algy, the Curse of the Brewsters comes around roughly once every other generation. We have been waiting on this since the Charge of the Light Brigade. Of course, we have plans!”

“Well, you useless young witling,” Aunt Dorothy bellowed good-naturedly, as she and Aunt Margery pulled themselves out of my chairs, “what are you waiting on? You have your orders! Go! Tell that marvel, that you in no earthly way deserve, to pack!” And with that they sailed out of the room under full steam.

*****

Well, I had my marching orders, and like a good soldier, I set out to follow them to the letter. Or, at least, I gave it the old school try. Y’see, I rang up Jocelyn, to tell her that I couldn’t take her to the theatre that night, as I was busy making preparations. And she asked what preparations, and I said that it was an emergency, and she asked if Drummond was involved. So, I said, No, not yet. And she sort of invited herself along. Well, I don’t remember anything about the Aunts saying that I couldn’t bring Joss along, so it may not be the letter, but hardly against orders.

*****

So, Childe Algernon to the Dark Tower came. And a dark tower is practically the only thing that Pelham Court doesn’t have. It’s one of those piles of High Victorian gawdawful where the chap paying the bills just said to the builder, ‘Let ‘er rip!’

I made my obeisances to Uncle Augustus and Aunt Gwen, and introduced Joss. Aunt Gwen went to find her some rooms, and Weems, their butler, showed me to the patient. He knocked on a door, and an absolutely topping young girl of maybe 25 summers answered. “Miss Cynthia, young Mister Algernon, to see Master Desmond.”

“Algernon?” she asked, obviously not getting the joke.

“V. Algernon Brewster, esquire.” I gave her my best bow. “Acting as representative of the wizardly branch of the family.”

She brightened. “Oh? You’re here to fix this?”

“Ah, well, no. I’m more like that first doctor that they send in, to blind you with a penlight, thump the chest, look at the throat and say ‘hmmm’ a lot. After a bit, they send in the specialist and then the surgeon, and then the great thumping bill.”

She sighed and said, “Well, I suppose that it’s better than nothing.” Which is a step up from the normal reaction to seeing me, I guess. She let me in. “I’m Cynthia Faversham, by the way, Desmond’s fiancée. Or whatever you call it in this situation.”

“Hullo, Desmond, old chap!” I called out, “First and foremost, I’m supposed to pass on, that help IS on the way! Harold is mustering his forces and is on the march!” I looked around for Desmond, and I’ll be blessed if I could find him. The only other person in the room was one of Cynthia’s girlfriends. The g.f. was one of those ‘bohemian’ sorts, who insists on going about wearing men’s clothing and cutting their hair short. Which was a dashed shame, because she was just as topping a girl as Cynthia was, maybe her sister, and she might threaten to make the style respectable.

She stood, took a drag off her gasper, and said, “Oh, hullo, Algy. Well, I suppose that you’re better than just sitting about, waiting for the life sentence.”

“Excuse me?” I blurted, completely at a loss. With my luck, this exquisite creature was the bucktoothed ninny of a schoolgirl that I stood up for a date for phosphoruses five years ago, all grown up and holding a grudge. “Pardon me, Miss, but you have the advantage of me.”

“Yes, but then the vast majority of the human race does, Algy.” She shot back tartly.

“Oh don’t be a priss, Desmond.“ Cynthia said as she walked over by the g.f.’s side, “If you’ve got to be a girl, don’t be a priss.”

“DESMOND?” I bleated, my jaw dropping to the carpet, and bouncing back bang.

“Yes, it’s me! What were you expecting?”

“Well, I knew that there was a curse of some sort, but I was expecting something involving fur and fangs and full moons and that sort of thing! I certainly wasn’t expecting this!”

“To be honest, neither was I.” Desmond said bitterly. She gave me a long look. “What? You mean that you didn’t know that Aunt Ernestine was originally Uncle Ernest?”

“To be perfectly honest, old dear- I mean, old bean- up to yesterday afternoon, when the Aunts Assembled informed me of it, I had no idea that there was a curse at all!”

“You’re joking. It’s one of the family’s dustiest dinner stories.”

“You may be right.” I conceded, “Maybe it’s just that when I was at the table, the Curse got shoved off the slate, to be replaced by yelling at me for being a blockhead.”

Cynthia sat down with one of those ‘well, what’s to do’ sighs, and said, “You might was well set out the alms bowl and tell the story, Dizzy. Even listening to that creaking old fable is better than just sitting here, waiting for the axe to fall.”

Desmond sat down next to her, gave her the sort of adoring look that one smashing young girl really should not be giving another smashing young girl, and patted her hand. “Very well. Algy, some time about the Battle of Hastings, our Revered Ancestor, Eadfrid the Brewer, was having some problems with some necromantic cove named Thrydwulf the Foul.”

“Oh, this part of the story I know! Thrydwulf was casting covetous eyes at Bredeswege, Eadfrid’s lovely young daughter, making untoward advances, threatening the father and generally reading from the Middle Ages handbook on ‘How To Be a Complete Rotter’.”

“Yes, one rather gathers that Bredeswege a bit of all right.”

“It probably didn’t hurt that she was the daughter of the local brewer,” Cynthia sniffed, “and as such, was sitting on a pile of cash.”

“And, as I remember it,” I steered the course of the story away from the rocks, “didn’t this Thrydwulf bounder lay some sort of curse on Eadfrid’s mash or some such?”

“Actually, what he did was curse Eadfrid’s vats. Eadfrid could have just chucked out the mash, without a problem. But the vats were these great bronze things that he’d gone into seven different kinds of debt to get. He couldn’t just chuck them; if he had, he’d have gone bust.”

“By the way, Dizzy, old bean, exactly what did this curse do?”

“Oh, simplest thing in the world- it turned the beer skunky. Pigs complained if you chucked it in their sties, and all that. Eadfrid had the village priest come in, and the poor blighter was too busy voiding his gullet to say so much as a Pater Noster.”

“And so, enter Alembic the Alchemist! Who fights a magical duel with Thrydwulf, sends him off with a tick in his ear, woos the fair Bredeswege, lifts the curse from the vats, and concocts Alembic’s Own Stout to convince the locals that production is back up to snuff!”

“Yes, well, Algy, that’s the story. At least, that’s the story as far as it goes. But there’s another bit. Don’t know why you haven’t heard it. Anyway, as the story goes, Eadfrid gives Bredeswege to Alembic, and they’re married, and on into ‘happily ever after’. But, a year to the day after Alembic thumped him in magical combat, Thrydwulf came back. Somehow, he inveigled Alembic to drink some god-awful potion or another. Alembic, like a chump, drinks it and turns into a lovely young maiden.”

“Why is it,” I wondered, “that in these stories, strapping young men always get turned into lovely young maidens? I mean, you’d think that maybe they’d get turned into those horsy, corn-fed types once in a while, or maybe, since they were in a brewery, one of those girls with the ‘beer barrel’ figure.”

“Well, I don’t know about the others, Algy, but I can tell you that Alembic got turned into a real traffic-stopper. I know, because it’s a condition of the curse. The victim doesn’t just get turned into a girl, but a real head-turner, who ages slow and gracefully. Look at Aunt Ernestine!”

“You mean… all that bit with Ernestine gallumphing about, spry as a goat, when she should have been shackled to her rocker, was because of the Curse?”

“Yes, from what the Pater has told me, the Curse turns the chap it’s clapped on into whatever he thinks a ripping girl should look like. Apparently, Great-uncle Ernest liked in the horsy, outdoorsy type that glow with health and energy and all that.”

“Ah!” I said, the penny dropping. “That would explain it.”

“Explain what?”

“The resemblance.”

“What resemblance?”

“You two. When I first came in here, I thought that you two might be sisters, or some such.’

“Really?” Cynthia breathed, looking at Desmond curiously.

Desmond blushed and said, “Well, I know a ripping girl when I see one, and bally well if I didn’t do everything that I could to catch her when I saw her!”

“Oh, Dizzy!” Cynthia gushed, and she leaned in, and would have kissed Desmond, but at the very last moment, she remembered the embarrassing situation, and turned it into a chaste kiss on the cheek. Still rather flustered, she made an excuse to go see about the tea.

As Cynthia left, Dizzy got up and walked over to the window. “This has been rather hard on her. Cynthia’s been putting up a good show, but I can tell.”

I walked over and stood by her. “I take it, that yours wasn’t one of those ‘well, we’ve got to get this idiot hitched to someone’ betrothals, or a ‘they’ve got an orchard, and we’ve got a cider press’ arrangements.”

“Well, actually, the Favershams do happen to own an absolutely first rate drayage and distribution outfit. But that’s just the icing rosebud. I’ve known Cynthia since I was with her brother Oogie at school, and well…”

“ ‘Struck Dumb by Cupid’s bolt’ and all that?”

“More or less. Made a complete blithering ass out of m’self for years, trying to be good enough for her.”

“Well, don’t worry about it, Dizzy old lad. I make a blithering ass out of myself all the time.”

“Yes, but with you, it’s a chronic condition. Anyway, after years of putting my foot in it, I finally worked up the nerve to tell her how I felt, and dash it all, if she didn’t feel just the same way!”

“You’re having me on.”

“No, I’m not!”

“That only happens on the stage. Or in those drivelly ‘Only a Factory Girl’ books.”

“It happened just as I said.”

“Well, I guess that it was bound to happen to someone, eventually.”

“Anyway, we’d been seeing each other for a few years, and we were going at it hot and heavy, what with trips down to Torquay, dancing and… whatnot.”

"What not?"

"No, no, WHATNOT."

"Oh, that whatnot!"

"Right, you understand."

"No."

“Yes, you know… whatnot…”

“I don’t follow you.”

“You know… whatnot!”

“Y’mean, going around to little shops, taking tea, and all that?”

“Well, that too, but, you know… whatnot! What all the papers and magazines are always in an uproar about.”

“Dizzy, you’re a Socialist?”

“No, Algy, you abysmal chowderhead! Cynthia and I were… celebrating the honeymoon, so to say.”

“What? Why wasn’t I invited to the wedding?”

“Because we haven’t been married yet, you idiot! We’ve just been doing… Whatnot.”

“Oh. Oh? Oh. OH!” I gaped at Dizzy as the realization that Cynthia had been performing her wifely duties ahead of the mark sank in. “Oh, and Cynthia…”

“Algy, a week ago, all that Cynthia and I had to do was look at each other and it was like setting a match to dry wood.”

“Ah, Desmond, old chap, I don’t really think ...”

“But now, it’s like kissing your sister.”

“Well, I never actually HAD a sister ...”

“Well, I do, and it’s bally well the same! All the affection, and none of the fire.”

“Well, if it means anything to you, Desmond, old man, -er- well, from what I just saw, Cynthia is still pretty keen on the Man inside, to turn a phrase.”

“That’s not what really has me worried, Algy.” She slumped. “Algy, in the two days since this beastly curse settled on me, I have been… feeling… things… When Dr Breversham was called in to examine me, right out of the blue, I found myself being fascinated by his eyes.”

“His eyes?”

“Yes, his eyes!”

“What about his eyes?”

“I don’t know! There they were, a perfectly respectable pair of blinkers, doing their job as directed, but I couldn’t stop staring at them! And the way that he was so strong and comforting…” Dizzy stopped with a shudder and waved that train of conversation away. “And then, this morning, I was feeling rather cramped in, so I went for a bit of a walk. I walked out by the fields, where they were bringing in the barley- we grow our own barley, very important to maintain rigid quality control. Mustn’t let any rust or mold into the mash- oh, and our own hops, can’t let the brokers get between you and absolutely the best hops. And suddenly, just as I was putting the old expert eye on the condition of the grain, I noticed the hands on the hand.”

“The hands on the hand?”

“The chap who was bringing in the barley. He had such large, powerful, masterful hands- and yet such gentle hands. And the set of his shoulders…” She sort of drifted off from there, apparently gazing into some invisible world of large, gentle hands and shoulders of whose properties I wot not. Then she snapped out of it. “Oh, where was I?”

“You were hopping on about the hops.”

“Oh, yes, of course. How silly of me. Anyway, there I was, looking at the grain, and suddenly, I was completely swept away by the raw physical presence of the hand bringing in the barley. I just stood there, like a chump, not able to form a cogent thought, let alone say anything.” Desmond shuddered again. “I’m just glad that no one recognizes me like this. I’d never live it down. And every time that I go off like that-”

“It’s happened more than once?”

“Too often.” From there, she managed to hare off onto barley, and hops, and the absolute necessity of pure water, and other minutiae concerning the brewery. Things that she was far more comfortable talking about. Some coves have to be dragged into the family business by their heels, kicking and screaming, and bewailing the loss of their dream of becoming yet another musical comedy producer. But not Desmond! No, Desmond has malt under the skin and barley on the brain, God Bless Him. Or her. Or whatever.

I let her natter on for a while. I sort of let the noise wash over me, the way that I do, when a chap needs to talk about newts, or silver cow creamers, or whatever they talk about when they talk about things that aren’t really important and world shaking. Like golf. Then I gave her a comradely punch in the arm, and told her to buck up like a good chap. That seemed to do her a world of good, and I let her have a little time by herself.

I was wandering down the halls in search of my rooms, when I ran into Cecilia, Desmond’s aforementioned sister. Good egg, all around. “Oh, Algy! There you are. Tell me, why did you bring this Yardley woman along with you?”

“Well, old thing, the question is more ‘how would I stop her’?”

“Well, you didn’t tell her about the Curse, did you?”

“How could I? I hadn’t heard of it before yesterday, and the topic didn’t really come up on the ride down.”

“Well, thank goodness for that. Now, in case Mother and Father haven’t told you, it’s very important to keep mum about Desmond.”

“Why? Mind you, I’m not complaining- it’s a dashed touchy topic- but why the hush-hush?”

“Well, Sir Evelyn is here, and well, it’s complicated.”

“Sir Evelyn?”

“Sir Evelyn Wedgeware. He’s involved in some touchy business venture with Dad, and we have to tiptoe around him, at least until the ink is dry.”

“Why should this Wedgewood dish care about old Dizzy?”

“Well, it’s more than a touch odd, but it seems that he’s in some big rush to get married, and he’s sort of fallen off his conk for Cynthia.”

“Oh Dear.”

“Oh Dear, indeed!”

“Has he been making a pest of himself?”

“Well, yes. Unfortunately, he’s rather like one of those dogs who will keep trying to eat off of your plate, until you smack them across the nose with a newspaper.”

“And the periodical would queer the deal with the guv’nor, I assume. Is he here?”

“Yes, he’s just come down from London with two rather odd friends. I do hope that no one else comes down; we’re running out of guest rooms.”

“I say, Cee-cee old thing- why not try and run a little interference for poor Cynthia? Butter up this Wedgeware bird, and get his mind off the poor dear, at least until the curse is lifted, or the deal is signed.”

Cecilia turned a shade of green that I normally associate with hostesses that see me coming for a surprise stay, and shook her head. “NO! I mean, I love Cynthia like a sister, but no, I’d make a poor fist of it, and make things even worse.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

“Well,” she paused and blanched, “well, he refuses to wash.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know. He changes his shirt four or five times a day, but the reek from his hair alone is enough to put you off your food!”

The old tum-tum did a brief foxtrot in sympathy. “And Cynthia is just the sort that would put up with that, for Desmond’s sake. Well, have you asked his chums as to what all that is about?”

“No, Count Mazarin just gives me this look like I’m a half-wit child, and says that his Lordship has his reasons.”

I felt a brick drop in my stomach. “Excuse me, but did you say Count Mazarin?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Tallish bloke, continental type, goatee beard, eyes that could peel an apple at twenty paces, talks like he’s the ingenue’s father in a melodrama?”

“The very one! You know him?”

“All too well, I’m afraid. The last time that I saw him, he tried to have me pinched for cheating at cards.”

“You were cheating at cards, Algy?”

“No, the other bloke was, but this Mazarin egg thinks that I’m Professor Moriarty.”

“What? You?” I explained about the harebrained scheme that Grassy had dragged me into. She dissolved into a fit of most unsupportive giggles. “And now?”

“And now, he seems to think that I’m some sort of font of fiendish cunning, hiding behind a façade of facile imbecility, sort of an evil Lord Peter Wimsey.”

She tittered again, and said, “Well, look on the bright side- all that you have to do to completely confound him, is just stand there and not do anything sinister. It will probably drive him mad, trying to figure out what you’re up to. And what about his friend?”

“What about his friend?”

“Oh, that’s right, I didn’t tell you. The other specimen that Sir Evelyn brought down, is a flash bit named Hobsden, a greasy sort that smirks at you from over a pencil mustache.”

“RUPERT Hobsden?” I goggled.

“What? You know him as well?”

I gave Cee-cee the highlights- or in Hobby’s case, the lowlights- of my acquaintance with the Hobsden, starting with the time that he convinced me that he was the dormitory bank, and finishing up with Hobby’s siccing Mazarin on me at the Tyche Club. “So, he’s a bit of a Rum Dog Dingo?” Cee-cee summed it up for me.

“He’s a bally disgrace to inebriated canines, wild or domestic, the world over.”

“But, if he’s here, with Sir Evelyn…”

“Just go and tell Weems to count the family silver. And everything else that isn’t nailed down. And then tell him to count the nails.”

Cecilia went off, whether to alert the staff or not, I couldn’t say. I found my room, where Djiivs was getting my dinner jacket ready. “I say, Djiivs! I’ve just come from visiting the afflicted!”

“Yes, Sir?”

“You’ll never guess what happened to poor old Dizzy!”

“I venture not, Sir.”

I informed the faithful retainer as to the skeleton that had come tap dancing out of the family closet. Djiivs did seem rather taken with one point. “But, Sir, if your Revered Ancestor, Alembic the Alchemist had been changed, as it were, into an ancestress, then how was your distinguished lineage established?”

I chewed that one over a bit. “Well, I do seem to recall that Alembic and Bredeswege had two sons, Hermium and Orichalcum, and then there some such about ‘other sons and daughters’. Maybe Hermium and Orichalcum were born in the year between the marriage and the spot where Thrydwulf re-appears in a plume of brimstone.”

“Were they twins?”

“Not that I recall. Funny that, what with it only being one year.”

“One gathers that the ‘other sons and daughters’ were children by either Bredeswede OR Alembic, but not Bredeswede AND Alembic.”

“Yes, that would explain that bit. I guess that both Alembic and Bredeswede found being female so much fun that they sought as much comfort as they could, while still being married to each other. After all, if Henry the VIII couldn’t get a divorce, why would they? I say, Djiivs, that does remind me-” I regaled him with Dizzy’s story, what with the hand’s hands and the doctor’s eyes and all that rot. “So, any ideas as what’s got Dizzy’s knickers in a twist, Djiivs?”

“Well, the first thing that occurs to me is that Miss Desmond is acting in a manner quite similar to a young girl passing the threshold into womanhood.”

“But Dizzy’s a full-grown man! Or, Woman, rather!”

“Precisely my point, Sir. Women experience emotions in a manner that is significantly different from the way that men do.”

“Well, that goes without saying, Djiivs.”

“Ah, but it must be said, Sir. It is the crux of my observation. When both sides of the human equation come into their own, they are subjected to the primal attractions to each other.”

“Subjected? Bombarded is more like it! A hundred gun barrage of vital juices, banging away at the tender feelings!”

“Precisely. The attraction is all the more powerful, for being unprecedented in their experience. Miss Desmond has years of experience in putting the attraction that a man feels for a woman into perspective, but absolutely none, in doing the same for the way that a woman feels for a man.”

“So, you’re saying that instead of getting it a little at a time, with a Headmaster and Upperclassmen to keep the natural impulses in check, poor old Dizzy is getting it all at once, right in the mug, bang with both barrels?”

“Delicately put, Sir.” Djiivs helped me climb out of the traveling suit, and into something suitable for country wear. “Still, there is one technical issue that is giving me pause.”

“Really? And what might that be, Djiivs?”

“The precise vector along which the curse passes from generation to generation.”

“Come again?”

“The classic curse is patrilineal, with the Eldest of the line passing the curse along to his eldest son upon his demise. If this is so, then Alembic passed the curse along to- which was the eldest, Hermium or Orichalchum?”

“I believe that it was Hermium.”

“Alembic passed the curse along to Hermium, who one assumes sired an heir before he was afflicted as was his father, or the curse was passed on to Orichalcum’s son, and so on. However, your Aunt Ernestine had no issue. So, by what means was the curse deposited on young Master Desmond?”

“You know, Djiivs, I have no idea? You’d have to ask Aunt Dorothy or Margery when they get down here. They’re just the sort to have kept track of this curse thingie.”

“No doubt, you’re absolutely right, as usual, Sir. Still, there is the matter of young Master Desmond.”

“What about him? Or, Her. Or whatever.”

“Well, young Master Desmond is not, I believe, as they say ‘of the Craft’.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Well, as a rule, while the Laity tend to be more severely afflicted by curses, I’ve noticed that Mages tend to attract them like filings to a lodestone. Since, given the nature of the curse, and the fact that your family- like many greatly distinguished bloodlines- intermarried extensively over the generations, it would be very difficult to establish a clear line of descent from the blood of Alembic, the source of the curse, as opposed to the *ahem!* ‘other sons and daughters’ that Bredeswege had.”

“Too true about that, Djiivs. What with cousin marrying cousin and all that, I’m amazed that a real drooler or two hasn’t popped up in the Brewster nursery.”

“Just as you say, Sir. So, with this confusion of descent, as it were, it would be logical for the curse to fall back on the next material factor- magical talent.”

“So, if I get what you’re saying, Djiivs, your question is why did Desmond get the black spot, as opposed to those of us in the family who practice the old Mojo?”

“Right, as always, Sir.”

“So, you’re saying that old Dizzy might have a touch of the Gift, Djiivs?”

“No doubt Sir, but hardly enough to attract the curse to Master Desmond, over your more potent relations.”

“So you’re saying that there’s still a card out there, that hasn’t been turned over?”

“Well, Sir, all that I’m really saying is that it might be best all around, if you were aware of the possibility.” With that, he sent me off to take care of my social obligations.

Weems informed me that the family was gathered in the south parlor, waiting on an informal tea. Well, more than a bit peckish- all that I’d had was an abbreviated breakfast, and a quick stop at the local, to reassure myself that the family product wasn’t suffering from Dizzy’s absence- so I toddled off in that direction. I found Joss in the parlor with Cynthia, Uncle Gus and Aunt Gwen.

There was this rather greasy looking bloke who seemed to be pressing Joss. She had her back against the mantle piece, and looked like she was making up her mind as to whether getting away was worth getting her dress sooty. Always eager to come to the rescue of a damsel in distress, I grabbed a sandwich off the tray and walked over. “What ho, Joss? Who’s your new friend?”

I had the bad luck to be in the middle of chewing the sandwich when I reached them, and more to the point, the smell reached my nose. Suddenly, I had to hold to my empty stomach with both hands to keep from disgracing the family. Joss sidled over to me and hooked her arm through mine. “Oh, there you are, Algy! Algy, this is Sir Evelyn Wedgeware. He’s here-”

Before Joss could finish the introduction, the lounge erupted in thunder. “BREWSTER! What in the name of all that’s Holy are YOU doing here?” Count Mazarin came across the lounge with all the gentle subtlety of an avalanche.

“Hold on, hold on!” Uncle Gus puffed, “What’s all this ruckus about then?”

“Why have you allowed this--- serpent of evil into your house?” Mazarin jabbed the Robespierre finger at me.

“Why? Well, Algy may not be much, but he’s still family.”

“Family?” Mazarin bugled.

“Yes, the Brewsters.” an all-too familiar oily voice lubricated across the room. “What, M’sieur leCompte? You couldn’t be bothered to learn your hosts’ family name?” I spotted Hobby ‘epoxy-fingers’ Hobsen lounging against one of the bric-a-brac cases, and wondered if that space had been empty before.

Cynthia came forward, even though it brought her within range of Sir Evelyn. You have to respect courage like that. “Yes, Algy’s down here on a family matter.”

“Family matter?” Mazarin muttered darkly, as though ‘family’ was somehow connected with ‘coven’ or ‘Bolshevik cell’ in his brain. “What sort of ‘family matter’?”

“A family matter that is a FAMILY matter.” Uncle Gus said in a ‘mind your bloody manners, you fopping frog’ way.

“Why, ALGY, old chum, I had no IDEA that you were going to be coming down.” Hobby said and a smile blossomed forth on his face, the sort that suggests that maybe he’s just found a way to pay off his shirt maker, after all. He slithered over, and draped an arm across my shoulder in a matey way, displacing Joss. “I hear from my good friend the Count here, that I just missed you at the Tyche Club, two days ago.”

I edged away from Hobby, making sure of my wallet and watch. “So my djinn Djiivs tells me. I dropped by for a bit of a chat, and your chum Major Sterling invited me for a flutter. Rather reminded me of the old days at school.”

“Oh, did you make a habit of cheating at cards at school, as well?” Mazarin said in his best Wednesday Matinee voice.

Icicles formed on the Guv’nor’s mustache. “And what, pray tell, are you insinuating, Sir?”

Now, a sensible cove would have noticed that the ice he was tap-dancing on was beginning to crack. Not Mazarin. He opened up all the way to his High Shakespearean voice, “Two days ago at the Tyche Club in London, this man cheated Major Roland Sterling, an honest and honorable man, at cards, swindling him so badly that he had to close his place of business!”

Sir Evelyn plowed forward, parting the scene with his chin. “Is this so, Brewster?” I could see where Cecilia got the image of the dog pushing its nose onto your plate. He was the pit bull sort of bloke. I had to fight the urge to place a biscuit on his nose, and make him wait to take it.

Joss stepped up to Mazarin- brave girl, it brought her upwind of Wedgeware- and stood firm. “Algy went to the Tyche Club to get back some IOUs that your pal Sterling had swindled out of Gustav and my brother Lionel, using marked cards provided by this flash number over here.” She gave Hobby the old gorgon’s eye.

“Gustav? Who’s Gustav?” Wedgeware floundered.

“Gustav LeBrec is a master French chef.” Hobby smirked as he snaffled some more of Uncle Gus’ best port. “One that I’m told that Algy here has all but enslaved into drudging away at his club.”

“What’s this?” Wedgeware strained at an invisible dog-chain. “What sort of family do you have, Brewster? First that milksop son of yours, who’s can’t be bothered to see me face to face-”

Cynthia stepped forward. “Desmond is indisposed. If he could see you, he would.”

You wouldn’t think it possible for a person to smirk more than Hobby had been, without imploding or something, but he managed to refute science and common sense. “Oh, old Dizzy simply isn’t MAN enough to face you, Evelyn, not even when his alleged fiancée is being wooed by another man.”

Cynthia went beet red. “Desmond is more of a MAN right now, that you’ll ever be, you-”

Wedgeware got between Cynthia and Hobby, and took her hands in his. Mistaking the watering of her eyes for tears, he looked at her with what I assume he thought was a tender expression and said, “Cynthia, darling, why are you wasting your time with these people? The son is a coward, the cousin is worse than a cheat, and the father-”

“ENOUGH!” Aunt Gwen thundered. She came forward like the Golden Horde, spitting white rage. Wedgeware, Mazarin and Hobby all took an instinctive step backwards. Well, Sir Evelyn has well and truly put his foot in it. He’s facing one of the Brewster Aunts in all her terrible glory. What, you thought that I was boshing, about Horatius and the Bridge? I kicked back to enjoy the spectacle, which for once, wasn’t aimed at me.

“WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, you trumped up little squit? You come into, not only our house, but our family seat, eat too much of our food, drink too much of our wine, you throw your weight as if you were the Lord of the Manor! You bring in this flash lot, without so much as a ‘will you have them?’ Then you abuse our servants, you insult Cousin Algernon here- well, that’s not so bad-, you insult my son, and you insult my husband! And then, as the capping outrage, you take crass and revolting liberties with my future daughter in law! That, I will NOT permit! You vastly overestimate the value of your custom, Sir. Have your man pack your bags, as you are no longer welcome in this house. We will NOT set a place for you at breakfast.”

“Madam, if you think-” Mazarin began, but Aunt Gwen shot him down like an overweight grouse with a single pot of her glacial eye.

Hobby started as if he was going to say something, but Aunt Gwen simply said, ‘A phone call can have Clementine Sledgeby here in two hours.” He wilted like last week’s rose.

“Uhm, Mrs. Brewster,” Wedgeware whimpered, the pit bull having been roundly whipped, “you said that you will not set a place for us at breakfast. About dinner…”

“Dinner,” Uncle Gus said with hauteur as befits a man who shares a bed with the woman who’d just set those three on their heels, “will be at Eight. Dinner was offered you, and it will be provided. At least try to dress like gentlemen, Sirs.”

*****

Between Tea and Dinner, Cynthia insisted on being rowed out onto the lake. “Cynthia,” I said, putting all my might into the oars, “not that I mind throwing my back out for a lovely young girl, but why the sudden craving for the bounding main?”

Cynthia sighed, “Well, that boob Sir Evelyn seems to think that your family has me under some sort of spell, and he will keep following me about.”

“Well, I can see the necessity of keeping one’s appetite for dinner- Aunt Gwen told me that her cook is fixing trout almondine tonight- but what makes you think that Wedgewood incapable of seizing a pair of oars himself?”

Cynthia smiled the sort of smile that Theda Bara uses, as she’s about to slip the gullible hero the poisoned pomegranate. “Sir Evelyn is deathly afraid of water.”

I stopped rowing, reeled by the impact. “You mean, even to the point of abandoning basic hygiene?”

“So I assume.”

“Odd. I’d have thought old Wedgewood the sort that would hate to show fear, even to a charging tiger.”

“Well, he backed off from your Aunt.”

“Cynthia, dear, there’s fearsome and then there’s horrific.”

She leaned back in the boat. “It wouldn’t be all that bad, but all that he seems to be able to talk about is Money, Curses, and having children.”

“He’s pitching woo AND a family at you, all at the same time? Whate’er else he may have, the old teacup has nerve!”

Cynthia looked at me, suddenly as delicate as one of those porcelain figures that they won't let me touch. “Algy, do you honestly think that your family can change Desmond back?”

“Well, from what Aunt Dorothy tells me, they’ve been working on this since the Crimea. If I know my family, they’ve a wheeze or two up their collective sleeves, along with a spare Ace or two.”

“Maybe Count Mazarin has a point, about you being a card sharp.”

After a few hours of me straining my shoulders at the oars in the service of the lady fair, I was finally able to row back to the pier. I pulled up, only to find the dock cluttered up with the Hobsden himself. I was rather surprised to find him there, where I had such a lovely chance to give him a whack in the back of the knees with an oar. “Out rowing, I see.” He said fatuously. “It’s absolutely no good, you know. You’ll never be able to get away from Sir Evelyn. He already thinks of you as his own.”

“Oh, be quiet, or I’ll tell Mother to bar you from the table, and send sour porridge to your room.” Cynthia snapped. “Give he a hand up, Algy.” She spared Hobby the glare you give a suspect piece of cod.

“Half a tic, Cyn.” I said as I untied the bottle of Alembic’s Own from where I’d stashed it in the water near the pier to cool. I know, it’s not the usual thing, but I picked up the habit of drinking beer cold in the States, and it does rather buck up the kick after a spot of exertion. “After all that, I’ll need a stiff restorative to lend strength to the thews.”

I watered the tonsils, and buoyed by the family’s pride, I heaved Cynthia onto the dock. Cynthia looked like she was thinking about bunging the bottle at Hobby’s head, but I assured her that the bottle would be put to better use, sent back to the brewery to be renewed to its sacred purpose.

*****

Well, Dinner was a pretty ghastly affair, all around. Dizzy still wasn’t down, Cynthia was trying to keep her distance from Sir Evelyn, Uncle Gus and Aunt Gwen were trying to put the best face possible on it all, and Mazarin kept checking the food for poison. Figuring that he was going to be chucked out the door in the morning anyway, Hobby let his personality blossom into the full bloom of hemlock. “It’s all for the best, Sir Evelyn. Any business with the Brewsters is bad business. Why, my family’s never had anything but the dirty end of the stick from them. Why, even that ‘Revered Ancestor’ of theirs, Alembic, was nothing but a cheat. He not only stole the recipe for that Stout that they’re so proud of from my ancestor, Thrydwulf the Thaumaturge, but he snaffled his bride out from under him!”

Uncle Gus bolted out of his chair, and looked like his hand wanted a broadsword. “WHAT? Of all the impertinence!”

“It’s true! You don’t want to admit it, but the fair Bredeswege was promised to my ancestor, Thrydwulf. The marriage would have been a happy one, but his treacherous apprentice, Alembic, betrayed him! He sabotaged Thrydwulf’s work with Eadfrid’s vats, and accused him of laying on a curse! Then he went behind his master’s back, and undid his own sabotage, in exchange for Bredeswege’s hand- and ownership of the brewery, of course. And, just to cap off a fair hand of knavery, Alembic stole Thrydwulf’s book of formulae, which contained the recipe for the Stout that Alembic claimed as his own.”

Uncle Gus calmed down, and smiled the sort of smile that a barrister gives you, just after you’ve squarely put your foot in it, under oath. “Just the nasty sort of business that I’d expect of a descendent of Thrydwulf’s, Hobsden. But, just as your ancestor was slipshod and ignorant, so is his descendent. There is _nothing_ alchemical about the recipe for Alembic’s Own Stout. And WHY would a thaumaturge write a recipe for a beer, in a book of ALCHEMICAL formulae?”

Hobby’s smirk froze on his face, but give the lad his due, he soldiered through. “How the deuce would I know? I’m a gentleman, I don’t know about tradesmen’s affairs!”

Aunt Gwen rose, and made a toast to Alembic, Bredeswege, and Alembic’s Own Stout. Sir Evelyn lifted his glass but said nothing, and Hobby and Mazarin left their glasses on the table.

*****

After dinner, I went to the billiard room to chase the little white ball around the table a bit. Hobby and Mazarin came in, helped themselves to some cues, and set up a new round, even as I was still playing. In turn, Hobby and Mazarin chased me from the billiard room, the card room and the library. I was on my way up to my own rooms, if only to see how that pair intended to elbow me out of my appointed chambers. Jocelyn snaffled me as I rounded the stairwell, and steered me into Cecilia’s antechamber. “You’ll never guess what?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that Joss. I guessed what once, and quit while I was ahead.”

“Oh, don’t drivel, Algy.” Cecilia said with a poke. “Dad finally came clean.”

“What? You mean that bilge about Alembic being Thrydwulf’s apprentice and making off with Bredeswege wasn’t a load of codswallop?”

“Oh really!” Joss sounded just like Aunt Margery, “Don’t be any denser than you absolutely have to, Algy!”

“Dad told me that that blackguard Hobsden knows all about Dizzy and the curse. More than that, he said that he can lift the curse, for 5,000 Pounds.”

“Five Thousand Pounds?” I yelped, “He didn’t agree to this hogwash, did he? Hobby would just take the money, pull some prank, and be over the hills and away, before we could so much as say ‘boo!’”

“I thought you sorcerer johnnies couldn’t break an agreement.” Jocelyn said with a skeptic glint in her eye.

“A Sorcerer’s Contract has to be made on a Seal of Hermes. Uncle Gus couldn’t be expected to know that. And besides, Hobby’s spent his entire life learning how to get around Sorcerer’s Contracts. Things like clauses in Latin, Greek and Enochian that seem to mean one thing, but really mean that he can stick it to you as much as he feels like it.” The memory of some of those clauses still hurt, when I let them.

“No, Dad didn’t give him any money.” Cee-cee reassured me. “Still, if Hobsden weren’t the heir of Thrydwulf, then how did he know about Dizzy? I mean, a nasty wheeze like turning a promising young man of the rival clan into a woman is precisely the sort of thing that the Hobsdens would pass around the family table, over brandy and cigars.”

“More to the point,” Joss cut in, “Hobsden isn’t daft enough to expect the master of the house to just hand over the boodle on a smile and a handshake. He’d want to change Desmond back as soon as he could, and bind your family to as sticky a contract as possible. That means that Hobsden has the spell, at hand, somewhere in his room.”

“Why would he have it in his room?”

“Well, he wouldn’t be barmy enough to carry it around on himself, now would he?”

“Actually, that sounds precisely what Hobby would do. Probably stashed away in some secret pocket or trick belt or some such.”

“Well, he’d have notes and a scratch sheet, and his spell book, now wouldn’t he?”

“Well, why would he?”

“Well, when he was here last week, I saw him noodling around the grounds, waving one of those pendulum things about, and making notes in a book.”

“What did the pendulum look like?”

“Oh, it was a large gold disk on a chain.”

“Gold? Not lead?” Joss asked intently.

“No, it might have been plated gold, but it was still gold.”

“Drat. If it were lead, it might have been a Seal of Saturn, and Hobby might have been looking for a hidden treasure or some such.”

“What do you think he was doing?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe he was checking for the ley lines and all that.”

“Ley lines?”

“The lines of magical power that drip all over the place. Drummond is always sniffing around for them. To me, it sounds like Hobsden was looking for the best place to perform the counter-curse.”

“Well, there you are, then!” Cee-cee gloated. “Even if Hobsden is cagey enough to carry his finished spell about on him, he still wouldn’t keep his notes and calculations or spell book hidden, now would he?”

“Cee-cee,” I took her in a cousinly grip by the shoulders, “Aunt Gwen may have given Hobby his walking papers, but he is still a guest in your house! You can’t just go into his room and turn it upside down, looking for some notes that might not be there! It’s simply NOT done!”

“Oh, I’m not going to search Hobsden’s room. You are.”

“ME? Cee-cee, I have nothing but sympathy for poor old Dizzy’s plight, but we are talking about violating Hospitality. That is more than simply Not Done, it is dangerous. DJIIVS! Would you explain why I cannot just go in to Hobby’s room and root about like a hog after truffles?”

Djiivs flickered out from the Great Unknown. “Well, ladies, you must understand that as a Certified and Licensed Wizard of the Realm, Mister Brewster is bound by several very binding oaths, even as medical practitioners are by the Hippocratic Oath. One such oath, the Vow of Virgil, demands that the postulant never, among other things, violate the hospitality of a host. If Mr. Brewster, as a member of the family, were to enter Mr. Hobsden’s room, then he would be violating the rights of the guest, and hence his uncle’s Hospitality. This would not be something that I would personally recommend.”

“Well, what about YOU, Djiivs?”

“As Mr. Brewster’s bound servant, I am also covered by the Vow of Virgil. Also, given Mr. Hobsden’s duplicitous nature, it is safe to assume that he has erected multiple wards on his room to prevent multiple forms of magically assisted entry.”

“Well, what about ME?” Joss asked. “I’m not a member of the family- curse the luck- I’m just another guest, I’m not bound by any bally vow, and to be honest, I doubt that Hobsden would be expecting me.”

“Djiivs,” I sighed.

“Actually, Sir, Miss Yardley has a point. As she stated, she is in no way constricted from entering Mr. Hobsden’s room. Other than a strict interpretation of the Law, of course. And, as she said, if she were the person performing the search, then both you and Miss Cecilia would be free to draw the attentions of Mr. Hobsden and Count Mazarin away from the room.”

“No, no, it doesn’t work.” I tried to bring sanity and reason to servant, paramour and relation, who had all apparently fallen prey to the same dementia. “One look at my blinker, and Mazarin would know that something was up, and he’s just itching for an excuse to stretch me out on the rack!”

“So send him on a wild goose chase!” Joss offered. “With you being the goose, of course.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, you know how Mazarin is always champing at the bit, looking to catch you with the smoking gun in your hand, standing over the fallen body and all that. So, you sneak out of the house in a way that Mazarin will notice and you go out and run him around in the dark for a while. I’ll look in Hobsden’s room. Cee-cee, are there any hidden panels or secret cupboards in that room, that I should know of?”

“And exactly what am I supposed to be doing, poking about in the darkening eventide?”

“Oh, just say that you lost something when you were out with Cynthia this afternoon, and you’re looking for it.” Joss snapped her fingers. “That’s the ticket! Just wander about, waving that pendulum that you use to find things that you’ve lost. It will confuse Mazarin no end, so he’ll wait until he thinks that you’ve found something to confront you. And you can just say that you didn’t find anything if he puts the screws to you. Say! Maybe I can use that pendulum thingie to find where Hobsden's hid his booty.”

Well that bucked me right up. “Sorry, Joss, but this is a Seal of Hermes. Not good at all for finding hidden things, only lost things. Shirt studs, cab fare, matches, all that sort of thing. Very different dynamic don’t y’know. Well, since that’s a wash-”

Djiivs cleared his non-existent throat again. “Actually, Sir, the simple addition of a Sign of Saturn to the Seal of Hermes should do the trick. Just write it on a piece of paper, fold it into a triangle and affix it to the Seal of Hermes.”

“But if you’re using it, what will Algy do, to keep Mazarin busy?”

“Oh, I have two Seals of Hermes.” I said, mouth out-racing brain by a full lap.

“You do? Why?”

“Well, I use one, because I keep losing things.”

“And the second one?”

“Oh, I use that to find the first one. I keep losing it.”

*****

I was outvoted when Djiivs admitted that his vote couldn’t count, as he could only vote the way that I told him. Joss chivvied me to crawl out the library window, as Cee-cee set about to keep Hobby busy.

So, yet again, I found myself stumbling on the sward between the main garden and the pond. Rummy thing, having to be potting about in the dark, looking for nothing and finding pots of it. I casually ‘lost’ my cigarette lighter, walked away, poking through the grass and bushes, before ‘giving up’ and going for the old Seal of Hermes in my jacket breast pocket.

Or was it my jacket inside pocket?

Or my waistcoat pocket?

Confound it, I’ve lost my demmed Seal of Hermes again!

I got down on all fours and scrambled around the grass, looking for it. Blast it all, this was why I carried that second Seal of Hermes around in the first place! It took me a while, but I managed to find my cigarette lighter, which made searching a bit easier, but no more successful.

I was making a third pass over, when there were the sounds of feet in the grass. “What in the nom le Bon Dieu do you think you are doing, Brewster?”

“Why hello, Count. Funny meeting you out here.”

“What are you doing?”

“I came out here to look for my cigarette lighter. I dropped it here this afternoon.”

“And what’s that in your hand?”

“My cigarette lighter. I found it.”

“Then why are you still scrambling around on the ground?”

“I lost something else, as I was looking for the lighter. Isn’t that the way it always is? You start off, then you drop one thing then another-”

“Will you be still? Do you think that your prattling nonsense fools me for a second?”

I got up and brushed the grass from my trousers. “Count, what are you doing out so late? Don’t you have to be leaving in the morning?”

Mazarin glowered at me with- I didn’t think it possible, but there is was- even more venom than before. He faded into the darkness, as if daring me to whistle up a fiend from the Pit, while he was on watch. I poked around a bit, and called it a loss. I could come back when Joss gave me back my spare Seal of Hermes, and the light was better.

*****

Oh, that I could have gone straight to bed and take care of finding my pendulum in the morning, as any sensible fellow should be allowed to do! But no, that wasn’t in the cards for poor Algernon! I was just at the door to my room, when Cecelia skittered up. “Oh, Algy! You must come quick!”

“Can’t it wait until morning?”

Apparently, it couldn’t. Cee-cee almost pulled my arm from my socket, dragging me over to Dizzy’s room, where Dizzy, Cynthia and Joss were waiting for me.

“Well, it’s about time you showed up!” Joss greeted me with all the cheerful affability of a Latin master. “Where have you been?”

“What, don’t you remember? Out banging my nose into very large and very hard trees, trying to keep that bird Mazarin out of your hair as you played Four-Square Jane.”

“Joss found Hobsden’s notes!” Cynthia breathed, all a-twitter.

“Find anything useful?” I asked, more interested in crawling into a soft, warm bed than in crawling any deeper into this mire.

“Of course I did, Idiot!” Joss snapped.

“Well, I like that! First, I am exploited, then I am exhausted, then I am unappreciated, and now I am insulted. So, now I am going to bed.” I stood and made for the door.

“But you can’t go!”

“Why not? It’s obvious that you don’t need a feeble witted boob like me, so I’m clearing the field for you laughing young daredevils to save the day.”

“But we do need you!” Dizzy said, with no small amount of desperation in her voice. “Jocelyn found Hobsden’s notes. From what we’ve been able to tell, the curse can be lifted, but only if this ritual that Hobsden has drawn out is done within Three Days of when the curse fell on me.”

I massaged the bridge of my nose, hoping that it would jump-start my aching brain. “And if this were the second act of a melodrama, these three days would expire within the next fifteen minutes. Am I right?”

“A little over two hours, actually.”

“Deuced poor timing on the director’s part. When you’re trying to keep the audience’s attention, you can’t keep stopping the action and letting things drag.”

“Oh, will you be serious?” Joss shoved a few sheets of foolscap in my hand. “Look at these figures. I’m no sorcerer, but I’d say that ’11:54’ circled and underlined is pretty damned clear.”

“Eleven fifty-four?” Cynthia asked, “I thought that these things had to be done at the stroke of Midnight.”

“ ‘Greenwich looks to the Stars; the Stars not to Greenwich’.” Well, it looks like I finally got some good out of staying awake in Astrology class.

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

Djiivs appeared, on cue. “It is a Wizard’s maxim, Miss. The forces that matters of this sort operate around are not bound by artificial constraints, such as Greenwich Mean Time. Tonight, True Midnight, which is the midpoint between the last rays of the setting sun and the first rays of the new day, will occur at Eleven fifty-four Greenwich Mean Time, not the twelfth stroke of the clock.”

“Djiivs, will you take a look at this mess?” I handed him the papers. “I can’t make heads or tails out of it.”

“It might,” Joss handed me some more pages, “if you had the entry that I jotted down from Hobsden’s ‘Book of Sins’.”

“ ‘Book of Sins’?” I gawped, “You’re joking! I mean, I never cared for the chap, but ‘Book of Sins’? Why not ‘Chronicles of Nasty’, or ‘Lays of Naughty’, or ‘How To Be A Complete Rotter’? I say! I’ve lost all respect for the blighter!”

“Where was it hidden, Joss?” Cee-cee asked.

“Oh, very crafty place- it was in his valise.”

“Any silverware?” I asked, going through the handwritten pages. It looked like a rather straightforward bit of business- invoke the powers, name the guilty parties, tell the curse to go find someone else to rain on- all made more likely by the addition of a few very important particulars.

“No. A few bars of soap, and a towel.”

“Sounds like Hobby is losing his grip. The lad that I knew at school would have found a way to stash the East Wing in his shaving kit. By the way, Joss, I didn’t know that you read Enochian.”

“That’s probably because I don’t.”

“What’s Enochian?” Dizzy asked.

“The language of Magic. But Joss, then how did you translate this out of Hobby’s book?”

“Simple! It was in English!”

“In English?”

Just as a thought was struggling through the underbrush of my brain, Djiivs said, “All things being equal, Sir, this looks like a valid formula. I can assemble all the essential components without being noticed, and have them for you well in time for the stroke of True Midnight. If all goes well, Mister Desmond should be himself again and fit to bid Sir Evelyn farewell in the morning.”

“I don’t know Djiivs. There’s something bally funny about all this. Hobby’s as twisty as an epileptic anaconda. He wouldn’t stoop to simple arm-twisting for five thousand quid. At least, not when he could squeeze us for a lot more. For all we know, this ‘three days’ yarn is just one of Hobby’s arm-twisting tricks, to put us on the spot.”

“Please, Algy!” Dizzy pleaded, “Even if it is a trick, can we take the chance?”

It was unfair, that’s what it was, just plain unfair. I mean, a chap can argue with another chap. With Aunts, he can even occasionally hold his own with pure brute logic- I’ll admit that I’ve never been able to pull it off, but there’s always a first time. But how, I ask you, is he supposed to say ‘No’ to four pairs of pleading eyes set in the pouting faces of four of the most smashing girls he’s ever clapped eyes on? Well, I’ll admit that Cee-cee is only a bit of all right, and a relative as well, but it all adds to the thing.

*****

When Djiivs is on his mark, he is a wonder to behold. Not only did he have all the condiments necessary for the work at hand at the place and time, and the tools as well. Not only did he make sure that our watches were perfectly synk- sinch- oh, I’ve lost it. He made sure that all our watches were at the right time. He even had a draping robe for Dizzy, so that she wouldn’t be distracting beforehand, or embarrassed afterwards.

At the very, precise stroke of Eleven fifty-four, Greenwich Mean Time, I burned the incense in the brazier, lifted my wand and chalice and began the chant. Energy flowed, the flames flare up a truly nifty shade of emerald, and-

Nothing happened.

Djiivs cleared his throat again. “Might I suggest that Miss Desmond remove the anti-magic charm that she’s wearing?”

Dizzy grinned sheepishly. “Oh. Quite. Silly me.” She removed it and tossed it aside.

Djiivs was prepared; is he ever NOT prepared? He handed me a fresh set of materials, and I began again, while the hour was still on us. But then-

‘HOLD VILLAIN!” Rang out from the darkness.

“Oh, Christ,” Joss spat, “It’s that idiot Mazarin.” Yes, I could make him out from the torch he was carrying. Hobby and Sir Evelyn were standing next to him.

Mazarin pulled out a pistol. “You will NOT sacrifice that innocent young pawn to your despicable Master of the Cult of the Bloody Fang!”

“Djiiiiivvvsss….”

“Even as you say, Sir.” Djiivs gestured, and a circle of silver flame erupted along the lines of the defining circle that I’d drawn in salt. “May I say that it would be prudent to repeat the effort, before the Count or Mr. Hobsden break down my protection?”

“Quite right, Djiivs!” I went at it with a will, burned the incense in the brazier, lifted my wand and chalice and began the chant. Energy flowed, the flames flare up a truly nifty shade of emerald, and-

-I began to fall down a very deep hole. Just as the hole winked out, I heard Cynthia say breathlessly, “Oh, DIZZY!”

*****

When I woke up, His Majesty’s Third Royal Engineering Corps Marching Band was back, only this time, they were marching around the vicinity of my upper digestive tract. The second trombone was in tune, but the first French Horn needed a good talking to.

Djiivs wafted in, a tray in his hands. “Good Morning. And how are you feeling today?”

“Vile.” I groaned. “Did I mix Bourbon and Scotch again last night?”

“No, you performed an act of extreme heroism under fire, and in so doing, rescued your cousin, Desmond from the Brewster Curse. Pick-me-up?”

“You are not a djinn, Djiivs, you are an Angel of Mercy.” I took the proffered glass of whatever it was, and downed it. HRM 3^rd RECMB, being sensible blokes, took advantage of the downpour to visit the local pub. Civil unrest quelled in the old midsection, I sigh with contentment. Then I remembered what Djiivs was talking about. “Oh! Then Dizzy is back to himself again?”

“Quite. When last seen, he was renewing his acquaintance with both of the two great loves of his life, by taking Miss Cynthia on a guided tour of the brewery.”

“Oh! I just remembered, Djiivs. That bird Mazarin showed up at the last minute, waving a gun about and trying to muck up the works. What happened with that, after the lights went out? He didn’t shoot me or anything, did he?”

“Do not worry yourself. Master Desmond immediately took matters in hand. The Count was convinced that you were attempting some Byzantine stratagem involving an imposture of the *ahem!* ‘real’ Desmond Brewster by an unknown female acquaintance of yours. Master Desmond had the elder Mister Brewster ring up the constabulary and the local Wizard, who confirmed that all was, as they say, on the up-and-up. The Count had to answer some rather stiff questions about his ownership of the pistol in question, and his use of it on the son of the house.”

“Good Lord! He didn’t shoot Dizzy, did he?”

“No, he did not. But, by statute, threatening to use a firearm is still Assault with a Deadly Weapon.”

“Well then, why did I get that case of the vapors?”

“A consequence of the spell.”

“But I’ll be all right, won’t I? Have the doctors taken a look at the fallen hero?”

“Yes, they have, and the prognosis was that you would be, if anything, even fitter than ever.”

“Well then! Three Hips and a Huzzah for Algy! And Aunt Dorothy and Margery wanted to me sit on my hands and wait for Drummond!”

For once, the Melodrama manager was on the mark. As if on cue, Drummond burst through the door. “Algy! My God! Are you all right?”

I tucked my hand behind my head on the pillow and gave him the Cheshire Cat grin. “Fit as a Stradivarius, old boy! Pity, you couldn’t make the big show!”

He flung himself at railing at the end of the bed and clutched at the brass, as if it were keeping him from going under. “Damn it all, Algy, why didn’t you wait? You were told to wait for me!”

“Terribly sorry, old bean, but simply not feasible. You see, we had intelligence that after three days, the curse would set like concrete. Or one of Aunt Matilda’s dumplings. Only had a few hours to act, so we took the beef by the bumpers. I know that it was a bit of a risk, but Dizzy was all for it, and well, everything turned out all right, didn’t it?”

Drummond goggled at me. “Turned out all right? Are you mad?”

“Drummond, what are you blithering about?” We have known each other all our lives, and while I haven’t always followed what he was saying, Drummond’s never blithered before. I rather resented him infringing on my franchise.

“Didn’t Djiivs tell you?”

“He told me that the doctors said that I’d be up and playing the violin in no time. Surprised the devil out of me, as I’ve never played one before.”

Drummond turned and bit his fist.

“What ARE you on about?” I threw the bedclothes off and got out of bed, and almost disappeared inside my own pyjamas, never to be seen again. Thinking that someone was having me on, and put me to bed in Drummond’s sleepers, I plucked the draping sleeve from the off appendage and checked that it was indeed my own. It was.

Seized by the investigative urge, I walked over to the dresser mirror and looked in. It was like looking at the cover of one of those Film Aficionado magazines. All that was missing was the caption, ‘the New Face of Glamour’, or ‘Filmdom’s New Sweetheart’, or ‘Too Young to be Married?’

The girl who gawped back at me from the looking glass was youngish, just out of school, I’d say. Shoulder length golden blonde hair cascaded in waved down to the shoulder, framing a perfect oval face with a cupid’s bow mouth, two big round cornflower blue eyes and the tiniest retrousse nose. If I’d seen this standing at the bus stop, I’d have thought it jolly well worth the wrath of the inevitable twenty-stone swain to pop over and say ‘hello’.

I pulled my pyjama top from my chest and looked down. What I saw there, could have put the Frivolitie Burlesque out of business in a heartbeat.

As I straightened up, the first things out of my rosebud lips were, “Oh well, at least I don’t have to worry about paying my shirt maker anymore.”

Drummond slammed a fist against the wall. “Blast it all! I blame myself!”

“And Jolly well you should. Blame yourself for what?”

“I should have been here! I could have stopped this!”

“Well, it is all your own fault, Drummond, old man. I told you, just because they won’t let you into the kitchen at a Chinese restaurant, doesn’t mean that they’re operating a White Slavery ring out the back.”

He looked at me with horror in his eyes. “How can you take this so lightly?”

“Well,” I said as I patted down my pyjamas for my cigarette case, and getting some very interesting reactions, “I guess that it’s all just so bloody surreal. I half expect the clock to start melting and a white horse to come trotting through the door.”

Djiivs materialized with a pot of tea and some muffins. I looked over the scant fare. “What, no eggs? No coffee? I spent a very active day yesterday, Djiivs, what with rowing, offering a shoulder to cry on, coping with insane French aristocrats, pottering around in the dark and relieving a major curse TWICE. And you offer me tea and muffins?”

“I didn’t want to spoil your appetite for dinner, Miss. The elder Mister Brewster has brought hither the fatted calf, in honor of Master Desmond’s return from the hareem, as it were, and your heroic part in affecting that.”

I brightened considerably at that. You must understand that up to now, the best that I could ever expect was the family Elders praising someone else –usually Drummond- to the skies, with “-oh, yes, and Algy, too” tacked on at the end.

“Algy, what were you thinking?” Drummond shouted.

“Well, to be honest, I was thinking that there’s no chance that Djiivs can hem in my own clothes to fit, now, so I’ll have to borrow some clothes for dinner.”

“That’s NOT what I was talking about! You know that you can’t just tell a curse to go pack it’s bags! You have to either set the curse on another person, or end it, once and for all!”

“Well, you have to admit, I did the first part, old bean.” Drummond shot me the most frightful glare and I sat, clutching the pyjamas about me. “Besides, Hobby’s spell looked like it was according to Hoyle. Even Djiivs said so.” I ended with a sniff, which I’ve done countless times before.

But I never to got the rise out of Drummond with it before, as what happened now. Drummond’s face softened, a look of concern blinged into his eyes, and he generally had the look of a chap who suddenly realizes that he’s kicked a puppy. He knelt down beside me and laid a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Oh, I’m sorry, Algy old –er,- old thing. I didn’t mean to snap at you that way. But, dash it all, look at what’s happened!” He absently laid his other hand on my knee.

I looked at the hand on my knee. “Drummond, what are you doing?”

“Yes, Drummond, what ARE you doing?” At the door, holding a clothes bag, was Jocelyn. One side of her face was wry, the other side was dark, and it looked like common sense was sandwiched between them.

“What’s the matter?” came from behind her, and Cee-cee squirmed her way around Joss through the door. “Oh!” she saw the predicament. “Have we come at a bad time?” she said, obviously preferring the wry.

Drummond lifted his hand off my knee as if it were a hot skillet, and struggled to his feet. He made a few blustering noises, and fell to a tactful silence.

“Well, it’s about time that you woke up!” Cee-cee ploughed through the awkwardness with a determination that she could only have learned at her mother’s knee. Indeed, in some far off, distant day, Cecelia may indeed become the most formidable of the Brewster Aunts, God help the poor chump. “I say, it’s a good thing that Dad chucked that Mazarin blaggard out on his ear. It looks like we’re going to have to start doubling up in the guestrooms. Drummond, will you be all right, sharing a brush with that brother of Jocelyn’s?”

“Grassy?” I asked, pulling my dressing robe over the old Pee-jays. Good thing too, as just at that moment, the bottom half decided to puddle around my ankles. “What the devil is Grassy doing here?”

“He, uhm, had to drive me down from London.” Drummond said, clearing his throat. “I, ah, couldn’t really travel by train. Complications in the Dunfermline bother.”

“And speaking of complications, Major Drummond Brewster,” Jocelyn said in a way that suggested that she was understudying for Aunt Margery, “precisely what are you doing, in an unmarried young lady’s bedchamber, with the young lady in question in her nightclothes?”

“What? What, do you expect me to just sit idly by while my best chum-”

“Oh, ‘best chum’!” Cee-cee snickered, “You are in for it, Joss- they’re ‘best chums’!”

“Enough!” Joss held up a hand, putting a stop to Drummond’s explanation. Yes, indeed, she’s been understudying. Bad news, all around. “You, Sir, will leave this to the women. And believe me, Drummond, once we’re married, this crashing around into strange women’s bedrooms will come to a thundering halt!”

“She’s talking marriage, Drummond.” I drawled, “Best head straight to Dunfermline. It will be less painful.”

Drummond straightened himself, set his jacket, shot his cuffs, and walked out with as much painful dignity as he could muster.

Joss fixed me with another of those ‘understudy’ looks and said, “Well, this is another fine mess that you’ve gotten yourself into, Algy Brewster.”

“That ‘I’ got myself into, you say? Twenty hours ago, I was all for tootling off to bed, but you? You said, ‘you’ve GOT to do it, Algy!’, ‘we’re all counting you YOU, Algy!’, ‘I’ll love you forever for this, Algy!’”

“ ‘I’ll love you forever’? I never said that!”

“Maybe not, but if you had a fraction of the breeding that you aspire to, you would have. I was simply trying to cover for your incredible lapse of panache.”

Cee-cee put her load of clothes on the bed. “Oh, don’t fuss at her, Joss.” She came over and wrapped her arms around me in a tight cousinly hug. “You were marvelous, Algy. I’ll never forget what you did.”

I returned the hug and looked at Joss. “See? Now that’s how it’s done.” Joss shrugged and gave me a hug. Despite an interesting bit where our bumps bumped, it was all distressingly… Platonic. You know, two days ago, I’d have amputated a major organ for that much from Jocelyn Yardley, but there just wasn’t the tabasco that I was expecting.

Duty done, Joss pulled herself away and said with a brisk ‘on with the programme’ tone, “Well, we’re to get you ready for dinner, Algy. As it’s sort of your debut, I’d say that we go for something virginal, peach, maybe. Though pink would go well with your colouring, too.”

“Well, if you’re going for virginal, you can’t go wrong with basic white.” Cee-cee offered.

“No,” Joss drawled, “too obvious.”

“If the dressmaker’s mannequin might throw in a word edgewise, why not simply use my own clothing?”

Joss and Cee-cee erupted in a flurry of giggles. “Because, you’d look absolutely ridiculous, silly! Look at me.” Joss took me by the shoulders and looked straight at me. Odd, I had to look up at her a smidge. Haven’t had to do that since Fifth Form. “See? You lost four inches and forty pounds, at the very least. After all, look at you! Flopping about in your own pyjamas.”

“Well then, Cee-cee, how the devil did Dizzy get his clothes to fit like that?”

“Oh, Weems brought Dizzy’s old clothes from school brought down. Even then, there was a fair hand of letting out and taking in.”

“Well, then why not try the same trick with my clothes? DJIIVS?”

“Yes, Miss?”

Yes, I admit it, I stopped and gaped. I reached for my monocle, and screwed it in the old light socket, as I got my wind back. Djiivs was still blue, but instead of looking like the chappie who serves port and says that Lord Waddles has arrived in a drawing room comedy, instead he looked rather like the third featured dancer at the Frivolitie Burlesque, who’s playing the ‘frisky French Maid’ in the comedy sketch. He- or she- dammit all, Djiivs doesn’t even really have a sex, so what’s he playing at?- was wearing a rather abbreviated version of a maid’s uniform. She had a kittenish face under a Louise Brooks Dutch bob, a trim feminine chassis, and a long pair of pins in high-heeled shoes.

“Djiivs!” Jocelyn said, “You’re Female!”

“Djiivs!” Cecelia said, “You’re Lovely!”

“Djiivs!” I said, “You have LEGS!”

“Yes, Djiivs purred, “I have noticed that, in the male form, when you can levitate, legs offer no advantage, and even constitute something of a hazard. However, I have also noticed, that in the female form, they are a positive BOON.”

“And what’s all this, then?” Joss demanded, waving her hand at Djiivs as to indicate the entire package.

“Well, Miss, I am by definition Miss Brewster’s servant. As a personal attendant, assuming a male appearance for Miss Brewster as she currently is, would be as inappropriate as assuming this appearance would be, if she were still male.”

“She’s got you there, Joss.” I said, getting back to the issue at hand. “Good to see that you’re still on the mark, Djiivs old M-er, whatever. Now, Djiivs, is there any chance of you doing the old rip-and-mend on a few pieces of my wardrobe, as to fit the current circumstances, as it were?”

“I’m afraid not, Miss.” Djiivs said with the required tinge of sorrow, “Such major alterations would be best left to a professional tailor, especially in clothes of such fine material and workmanship as you custom.”

“Drat it all. Well then, best to leap from the lion’s mouth and hope there’s a net. Well, what do you think, Djiivs? If I have to, I’d say this snappy little Egyptian motif number.”

“Perhaps, Miss, but on the guiding principle of ‘Easy Goes the Bus’, I’d say that the pink ensemble that Miss Jocelyn suggested would be most appropriate, at least until such time as you develop a better sense of couture for yourself.”

Joss leaned over to Cee-cee and muttered, “You’d think that someone who goes on about ‘appropriate’ as much as that one, wouldn’t wear a skirt that short.”

*****

Between the three of them, Djiivs, Joss and Cee-cee got me ready for dinner, while their comments could still be heard over the sound of my stomach complaining. Drummond met us at the landing, and did the most extraordinary thing. He offered me his arm, and walked me down the stairs.

Fancy that.

And then, Drummond brought me into the parlor. Now, normally, when I come into a room, the best that I can expect is, ‘Oh, it’s only Algy’. Instead Aunt Gwendolyn gushed, came over and greeted me with a hug and a kiss.

Dammit all, we’re English, we don’t greet people with gushes, hugs and kisses. It’s simply not done.

Cynthia towed Dizzy, who was looking his old self again, though curiously taller, I think. Or maybe it’s me. “Oh, Algy, thank you, thank you, thank you!” Cynthia slopped all over the place, “How can we ever thank you for what you did?”

“Yes,” Desmond said, in that sort of stuffed frog way, that said that he wanted to say a lot more, but dash it all, someone had to maintain decorum, “Bally Good Show, Algy. That’s the way to show them!”

“Oh!” Cynthia said with a giggle that suggested that her tour of the brewery had been sidetracked with some whatnot in the barley bin, “we can’t really keep calling you ‘Algy’ anymore, can we? Any ideas for a new name?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Cynthia.” Good Lord, Aunts Dorothy and Margery were there! I hurriedly checked the room for Aunt Agatha, but the coast was clear for the moment. Aunt Margery continued, “She already has a perfectly good name. Isn’t that right, Valentine?”

“Valentine?” Joss and Cee-cee echoed. “You mean that’s what the ‘V’ you keep sticking at the front of your name is for?” Joss continued. “I always thought that it was for Vercingitorix or Vortigern or Vespasian, or something daft like that.”

“No,” Aunt Dorothy said in her calling for the hounds across the dale voice, “she was born on Saint Valentine’s Day, and her mother was quite taken with.”

“Yes,” I agreed, steeling myself against the memories, “I still have nightmares about how you all used to make me dress up in a nappy and papier-mâché wings on my birthday, and go running about with a bow and arrow.”

“Valentine?” lubricated across the room, and Hobby followed it over, a pace behind his smirk. “May I say, this IS a distinct improvement, Valentine old thing!”

“Hobsden?” Drummond snarled, and Hugh, his familiar, a large, rather forward bulldog who tends to show more interest in my pants’ leg than is strictly called for, growled along with his master. “What are you still doing unhung?”

“Mister Hobsden is here at my invitation.” Aunt Margery said in a tone that the late Queen Victoria would have envied, “There are still several matters pertaining to the curse that have to be cleared up.”

Wedgeware bustled up and took my hand. “Miss Brewster, may I say that what I saw last night was absolutely the most utterly amazing thing that I’ve ever seen!” I was too busy reeling from the onslaught of the smell of his hair oil to object. “I have never seen such bravery and self-sacrifice in all my life! I deeply apologize for my behavior earlier.” He proceeded to ramble at me. You never really appreciate a British Public School education until you have to withstand a stomach-wrenching stench without flinching. But then, after Hoagwode’s in January, you can soldier on through almost anything. Even if I did almost lose a toe from frostbite.

Despite Wedgewood’s significant presence, I was surrounded by more direct male attention that I’d had since the rumor started flying around the Plover’s Club that I had tickets to the Test Match. “I say,” Grassy goggled, “is that really you?”

“No, Grassy,” I said, looking directly at him more out of a desire to get some fresh air in my eyes than anything else, “I’m the Duchess of York. Life at the Court of St. James got to be such a bore, that I thought that I’d live the mad, reckless life of Pelham Court for a thrill. Fetch me the Royal Chalice, peasant!”

Hobby handed me a drink, which I looked at, and handed to Drummond, who deposited it in the nearest potted palm. I must remember to check if that palm died. Hobby gave me a hurt look. “Really, Valentine! When have I ever been anything less that a perfect gentleman with you?”

“You’ve been a perfect something, Hobby,” I shot right back, “but gentleman was never a part of it.”

“But never boring, Val, never boring.”

“Truly spoken as someone who’s never had to spend a Sunday morning courtesy of the Shire, because someone signed your name to their cheques.”

“You know, Val, you really should be a little nicer to me.” I didn’t think that his smirk could get any more irritating, but Hobby always did have a way of surprising me.

“Valentine.” Aunt Margery cleared her throat. “It would not be advantageous at this time for Mr. Hobsden to leave. Please remain civil.”

“Civil? To Rupert ‘Oh, here’s a card that I haven’t marked yet!’ Hobsden?” Aunt Margery fixed me with one of those ‘I can make you run around on all fours, squeaking like a hamster’ glares of hers.

There was a bit of confusion, as several of the chaps had been messing about with the place cards, trying to get closer to me. Fortunately, Aunt Gwen had placed Sir Evelyn across the table and well down the board from me. Hard cheese for Aunt Dorothy and Aunt Margery. Pity, she wasn’t able to contrive an excuse to put Hobby next to him. If there’s anyone that I would wish Sir Evelyn’s odor on, it’s Hobby.

On that topic, Drummond growled, “I still don’t see why we have to feed THAT.” He gave Hobby the look a particularly keen terrier gives a rat.

“Well, among other things, Drummond, old lad,” Hobby said as he picked at the veal, “you need me to confirm that the charming young thing in the place of honor is indeed Valentine Algernon Brewster.”

“Why? Both Dr. Pike and Dr. Bramley certified that Desmond had been cursed, and that he was no longer under the curse, and that Valentine is now under the curse.”

“Ah, but they didn’t personally witness Algy’s exaltation into Valentine, and of those who actually did witness that critical event, only Count Mazarin and myself are of the Craft. And you threatened to chuck Mazarin in the hoosegow, so I wouldn’t count on him.”

“Are you seriously saying that you’d LIE under oath, and deny this young lady her rightful identity?” Wedgeware bristled.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Drummond said with the confidence of old acquaintance. “Hobby would never lie under oath. But he knows a thousand and one ways of mucking things up without telling a technical untruth. Believe me, Sir Evelyn, the courts were spared much grief when Hobby here chose not to read for the Law.”

“I KNEW that I shouldn’t have listened to you and that smarmy count, when you started pouring out all that bilge about the Brewsters!”

“Oh, don’t blame Count Mazarin.” Joss assured him, “He’s painfully honest. Barmy as a loon, especially where Alg- er, Valentine’s concerned, but honest. Lionel, why don’t you tell Sir Evelyn about Deirdre and the ‘Cult of the Bloody Fang’?

Grassy finished up with “-and the knife was rubber anyway, so the Police didn’t press any charges against Algy, but Mazarin was in Calais with Deirdre by then.”

As Grassy paused to wipe the soup off of his face, I finished for him. “At any rate, since then, the Count pops up every so often and spouts off about seeing me before a court of justice. He almost got me chucked into prison in France once, but the missing girl turned out to have eloped with the local chocolatier, and well, there you are.”

Sir Evelyn was still making pit bull terrier faces at Hobby. “And that loon and this sharpie had me convinced that you all were trying to cheat me in our deal, by setting the curse against me.”

“They told you about the Curse of the Brewsters?”

“Oh, no, not your family’s curse- MY family’s curse!”

“Your family has a curse?” Good lord! What, have they opened some cunning little shoppe in the Arcade, that sells Family Curses to the Nouveau Riche?

“Miss Valentine,” Wedgewood leaned over in the correct ‘relating the tragic tale of the family curse’ posture, “I am the Last of the Wedgewares. For centuries, my family has been haunted by the most horrific fiend imaginable. Back in the 15^th Century, my ancestor Sir Goswin Wedgeware (Bart.) offered marriage to a lovely young thing of good family. But, his family smelled a rat in the arras, and found out that the lovely young thing was, in truth neither lovely, nor young, or of good family, and had already buried three husbands in other shires. Some necromantic this that or the other, a magical Black Widow, if you will. Anyway, apparently the Black Widow couldn’t marry again until she’d consummated the marriage that had been contracted with Sir Goswin, and he was dead. So, she went to a lake that had a rather shirty reputation and cut a deal with the Water Maiden that lived there. The Water Maiden would get Sir Goswin out of the way so that the Black Widow could move on and keep up the business. In return, the Black Widow would cast a curse on the Baronet’s coronet, that would allow the Water Maiden to track down the holder of the title, no matter where he was. Sir Goswin almost immediately started getting damp.”

“Getting damp? You mean, he was sweating heavily from the sense of foreboding and doom?”

“Well, no, not him, I don’t suppose. Every one of us that’s come along since then, but I don’t think that he knew what was happening. No, he just started dripping water all over. It’s the first sign that the Water Maiden is near, y’understand. Anyway, a week later, they found poor Sir Goswin in the millpond, drowned. Two baronets later, the reigning baronet called in a Wizard, who was able to figure it all out. The wizard, who seems to have been a good bloke, got himself killed trying to get the bloody Water Maiden to beetle off. Poor old Dr. Ancinthromax. Here’s to ‘im.” Sir Evelyn raised his glass, as did we all. The occasional remembrance may be the only payment that poor old sod will ever get for that house call. “Since then, we’ve learned that B’flurb’thblupt-”

“Excuse me?”

“B’flurb’thblupt. That’s the Water Maiden’s name, or as close as we can tell. We think that it’s the sound that a man makes as his last breath comes rattling out, when he drowns. Apparently, the soggy bint is so taken with the sound, that she took it as her name.”

“B’flurb’thblupt?”

“No, ‘B’flurb’thblupt’. More stress on the last syllable. Anyway, we’ve learned that B’flurb’thblupt can’t just pop from place to place, and the further a place is from running water, the harder it is for her to get there. But, she CAN get there. I’d been living in the Sudan for five years, when I’d heard that Cousin Thaddeus had died in Arizona- that's in America. Sure enough, three years later, I woke up one morning, and my socks were wet.”

“Is that why…?” Cee-cee was intrigued, but dash it all you don’t just ask a man why he reeks, now do you?

“Why I never wash? Yes, well, y’see, we figure that B’flurb’thblupt sort of smells us, from the traces in the water we wash in. The bath water is chucked out, and it mingles with all the other water, and she gets the scent as it were. And eventually, she tracks us down. It’s hard, I’ll tell you true- I can barely stand m’self at times- but it works. I haven’t washed in seven years, and that moist murderess has lost the scent. For all I know, she’s still back in the Sudan, trying to figure her way out of the watering hole.”

“But, WHY did you come back to England?” Grassy asked. “Isn’t it rather running it rather close to the wall, coming back to her own mill stream, as it were?”

“But, I HAD to come back. I had to claim the title, now didn’t I?” Grassy wilted badly under the crushing weight of his faux pas. “Besides, I figure with all the advances in the Sciences, that Wizardry might have come up with something to get rid of her. I was making the rounds on Harley Street, which was how I ran into that, over there.” He pointed at Hobby with his chin.

“Which is why I so deeply impressed, Miss Valentine. To willingly take the burden of another's curse from their shoulders onto yours! I’m beyond amazed.” And then he gave me with a puppy-dog look that I recognized as being disturbingly reminiscent of how Grassy looks, when he’s met a lady trolley conductor.

Aunt Gwen took advantage of the lull to step in and offer a toast to me. They pipped at me, I pipped at them, we all pipped at each other, and dinner went well from there.

In accordance with crusty tradition, after dinner the ladies went off to sit for a bit, and the gentlemen went off to smoke. Desperately needing a fag, I almost joined them, but was steered back into the ewe’s part of the flock. When the door was safely locked, Aunt Margery opened up, “Thunderation, Algy, you were TOLD to do nothing!”

Ah, after all the unconditional approval and applause, I was feeling a mite jittery, not knowing what to do as a heroine and all. But now, I was back on familiar ground, as the family idiot. Cynthia stepped up to guard the wicket. “Lady Skelding, we had to act quickly! We’d learned that if the curse wasn’t lifted within three days of its laying, that Di- ah, Desmond would have remained a woman for the rest of his life!”

“And exactly who told you this, child?” Aunt Margery said with a gentleness that had never been aimed in my direction.

“We got it out of Hobby’s own ‘Book of Sins’.” Joss said, stepping up to take the honors for ‘Most Ingenious, Though Technically Illegal, Gambit’.

“ ‘BOOK OF SINS’?” Aunt Dorothy said, as though the words had gone sour in her mouth. “This Hobsden has obviously been reading too many cheap novels.”

Aunt Margery threw her scowling into third gear. “And how did you explain Algy having this, *ahem!* ‘Book of Sins’ for hours, to translate it from Enochian to English, so that you knew what it was saying?”

“What hours?” Joss asked, “That fool Hobsden had his spellbook in English, and he even had a bookmark on the section covering the curse. We figure that he wanted to squeeze the family for a few thousand quid, and get out while he could. Can’t be traveling fast, if you’re digging through the old Grimorum, and figuring out what means what.”

“And it never occurred to you that Hobsden just might have deliberately left that bit of drivel for you to find?”

Cee-cee said, rather hurt, as who wouldn’t be, “Well, I say, Aunt Margery! I know that Hobsden is a liar, a swindler, a cheat and a thief, but he’s hardly in the Evil Genius category. I mean, do you honestly believe that he’d have an entire book made up, just to pass along that one bit of persiflage, on the off chance that someone would look in his room?”

“No, but I DO think that he’d cast a spell on his own book, adding that one bit of persiflage, knowing that you’d be silly enough to try it!”

“Still,” Aunt Dorothy admitted, “all that Hobsden’s really done is keep us from sending the curse back at him. And, he hasn’t really done that, yet. If anything, Margery, we’re in a better position from which to deal with this upstart chit.”

“What?” I asked, almost dropping the liquid refreshment, “You’re going to deal with Hobsden? Why? I mean, to be honest, the sooner that Hobby’s far and away, the sooner we can fumigate his room.”

“To end the curse, of course! We had enough anxiety, what with Ernestine risking life and limb every other year, never knowing if a son or nephew was suddenly going to become a daughter or niece. It made arranging marriages an absolute nightmare! No, we want Thrydwulf’s little joke over and done with! Why even you, Algy, as useless as you are, don’t want to spend the rest of your life like that, do you?”

“Aunt Margery, as a dutiful neph- ah, niece, I feel obligated to warn you about Hobby. Any business with Hobby is a dirty business, which profits no one but him. Thrydwulf must have slept with an eel, to produce a line as slippery as that! I tell you, Hobby Hobsden is a rotten egg from a rotten hen!”

Aunt Dorothy just gave me an ‘I am the Empire’ smile and said, “Bosh! Just because this squit managed to pull one over on you infants, doesn’t mean a thing! You children toddle along. The adults will handle the terrible mister Hobsden.”

“Aunt Dorothy, I don’t mind telling you that you are my favorite Aunt, and I have nothing but the deepest respect, admiration and all that. If you say that you can bend a recalcitrant Earth spirit to your will, then said gnome is as good as in the bag. But, mark my words, Hobby is the Prince of Darkness, or at least his licensed representative.”

But the aged relations merely smirked at each other. “You children amuse yourselves, as we deal with the ‘Prince of Darkness’.” Then they steamed off in battle formation.

Since it wouldn’t do to rejoin the gentlemen so soon, I found myself trapped, another hen in the hen house. Joss cornered me and asked, “So, Algy, what’s it like?”

“Like? What’s what like?”

“Oh, don’t be anymore dense than you absolutely have to! Being a woman!”

“Well, you’d know better than I, wouldn’t you?”

“No, no, no! What’s it like, being a woman, after living your entire life as a man?”

“Well, please, Joss Dear, I only crawled free of the inky pit three hours ago, and even Drummond would admit that I’ve a trifle busy since then. Other than a draft up the inseam, there isn’t a lot that I can tell you.”

Joss sat down with a ‘Well, if you’re going to be THAT way about it’ air, “Well, just you wait. You’ll find that men never take what you say seriously.”

“Well, NO ONE has ever taken what I say seriously, so if women start listening to me- which I rather doubt- then it’ll be a step up, what?”

Cynthia sat down beside me and picked up a strand of my hair. “You do have lovely hair, Val. Pity Joss didn’t have a chance to give it a proper cut. Well, I guess that I’ll just have to ask Desmond.”

Remembering what Dizzy had told me about the hand’s hands and the doctor’s eyes, I rather doubted that he’d tell her his more interesting insights. “Oh, he didn’t talk about that, when he showed you the brewery?”

“Oh, we were too busy with checking the barley and whatnot.”

“Does barley mix well with whatnot?”

“Oh, barley and whatnot makes for a very heady brew. We kept going back for refills.”

“Was the mash any weaker for-?”

“No, if anything, I’d say that leavening made the mash even stronger.”

“What ARE you two talking about?” Joss drawled at us.

“Oh, just – whatnot---.”

*****

Eventually, Uncle Gus, Drummond and the other gents, finished gassing about what-all the women were saying, and rejoined us in the parlor. Since Aunts Dorothy and Margery were dealing with the Hobsden, the rest of the evening passed in pleasant tedium. Normally, we would have stayed up far later, but Sir Evelyn’s fear of water rather forced us to blow out the candles early.

Borrowing a nightgown from Cee-cee, I made for the bathroom, which was the one place that I could sure of avoiding Sir Evelyn. The shower was an absolute font of new insights, and I was so busy totting down mental notes for Joss that I didn’t notice that the breeze when I walked into my room. “Why, Count Mazarin! What ARE you doing in my room?”

He struck that ‘public prosecutor’ pose of his again. “I am here to unearth the TRUTH- about THIS!” He dangled a bit of jewelry from on high.

“Well, my Seal of Hermes! Where DID you ever find it? I was absolutely sure that it was as good as down the rabbit hole this time!”

He beetled his brows and snarled, “And exactly what were you looking for, with this?”

“I told you- my cigarette lighter.”

“But you’d already found the lighter.”

“Yes, but then I lost the seal! I can’t tell you how often that sort of thing happens. Why, one time-”

“ENOUGH! You are too hardened, too clever to admit your guilt, even when confronted with evidence. Therefore!” He reached into a waistcoat pocket and pulled out another seal. “BEHOLD! The Seal of Themis!” He waved the bit at me. “Now, Confess!”

And, from out of nowhere, I found myself saying, “Well, to be perfectly honest, I can’t say that I’m mad about your tailor. I mean, pinstripes, this early in the year? Really!”

He waved the bit at me with more force. “Confess! Tell me your darkest secret!”

Again, the old dentist trap opened, and I heard, “If you insist, I confess that I am rather enjoying this being a smashing girl lark. The clothes are a bit of a bother, but at least I don’t have to worry about any of that ‘put up your fists and fight like a man’ drivel anymore. More than a bit of a bother, being a peace-loving soul, and having to be ashamed of it, and all. Still don’t know what to make of the whole sex thing. Mind you, Cynthia and Dizzy seem to be making the best of things, but then, what little I’ve had, really wasn’t up to the whole advertisement campaign. And, I do have to confess the whole ‘being entered into’ thing does give one more than a touch of concern.”

“What- about- the- Cult- of- the- Bloody- Fang-?” Mazarin grated out, clutching his Seal of Themis like a life preserver.

“Are you still on THAT old wheeze?”

“Who is the dark master of the Cult of the Bloody Fang?”

“D’you mean, whose idea was it all?”

“YES!”

“Oh, all that was Grassy Yardley’s big idea. I just went along, as he’s a chum.”

Well, that well and truly floored the old bird. He just stood there, shaking his Seal of Themis, like it was a stopped watch or something.

“Count?”

“What?”

“You ARE aware that you’ve entered into a young lady’s bedroom, without knocking? Or even coming in the door, if that open window’s any clew?”

“What of it?”

“Just this.” I opened my mouth wide and let out a piercing scream that Ellen Terry would have been proud of. Mazarin rushed up, grabbed me, and clamped a hand over my mouth.

But all that Drummond ever needs is a good melodrama cue. He was at the door in a trice and had it kicked in before you could say ‘Douglas Fairbanks’. He assumed his best ‘Basil Rathbone as heroic lead’ stance and blared, “Mazarin, have you gone MAD?”

There was a sort of knee-jerk reflex to say that everything was all right, but it wasn’t, and what the deuce, Drummond needed a little bang-up action to relieve his tension. He planted a fist on Mazarin’s beezer, and started putting in a cash crop. When the spring sowing was over, Drummond handed him over to Desmond for weeding. That bit of horticulture done with, Drummond swept me up in his arms. “Algy! Did he do anything to you?”

“YES! The nincompoop almost killed me! What sort of idiot leaves a window open for a draught to come rattling through the place! And me in my dressing gown!”

There was a loud *Ahem!* at the door, and Joss was standing there. “Drummond Brewster, what HAVE I told you about crashing around into other women’s bedrooms?”

*****

The next morning, Djiivs had a nice little spring outfit laid out for me. I thought that it was a tad drab, and maybe needed a little something. But Djiivs convinced me that I didn’t know enough about women’s fashions as yet, and to leave such scholarship to when and if, it were settled as to which restroom at the train stations I’d be using from now on. Pulling the new things on, I took a look at myself in the long glass. Yesterday, Joss and Cee-cee had gone on about ‘drape’ and ‘lines’, and apparently my figure was a trifle ‘old-fashioned’ for the new designs. “I say, Djiivs, d’you think that I’ll have to go on one of those ‘one egg, half a grapefruit and some dry toast’ diets that all the girls I know seem to be on? They’re always ordering things like that, and then picking half my dinner from my plate.”

“I think not, Miss. After all, you have the Curse on your side. From what I gather, even allowing for the affects of illness and the passing years, you will always be very attractive. You may not always be in fashion, but you will always be attractive. So, you will never have to worry about losing your figure. However, given the amount of grief that young ladies are prone to give themselves over such things, I think that it would be best to gloss over that aspect of the Curse. Also, you might consider the feelings of the other young ladies, and hide your remarkable talents as a trencherman under a bushel as it were.”

“Peck at the food, even when I’m peckish, Djiivs?”

“It would be the genteel thing to do, Miss.”

That in mind, I toddled on down to breakfast, where Aunt Gwen had a spread on the sideboard that immediately knocked Djiiv’s politic words right out of my pretty little head. I had a plate half loaded down, when Hobby Hobsden came up and kissed me.

Yes, he KISSED me! Just walked up, bold as you please, crammed his smirking mug right into my face, and tried to choke me on his tongue!

I wasted a perfectly good plate of breakfast, smashing it into his face. “WHAT? What do you think you were DOING?” I sputtered. I mean, strange things happen to me so often, that for the most part I try not to make a lot of noise about it, but strange men- and Hobby is as Strange as they get!- do not come up and park a bus on my face!

“What’s the fuss, Val?” Hobby said, smirking even through the sunny-side eggs, “Can’t a man give his fiancée a kiss in the morning?”

*****

It turned out that Aunt Dorothy and Aunt Margery were the culprits. “Oh, this is just WONDERFUL! Just what I needed! To be dragged out of my life, called down here, ordered about by all and sundry, transformed into a chorus girl, and then get shoved down the aisle with a sack of snakes with a mustache! What, Fenella Cuthbert and Clymnestra Bulstrode weren’t frightful enough, you had to dig up Rupert ‘What’s my knife doing in your back?’ Hobsden to be my life-mate?”

Aunt Margery was uncharacteristically subdued. “Never thought that the blighter had it in him. We were just talking bosh, and before you could say ‘Jack Robinson’, he had a Seal of Thoth out, and we’d sealed a bargain.”

“Bosh? You offered him my hand, and everything that was attached to it, and you call it bosh? How do you bosh about marrying someone off?”

“I’m still not completely sure. There we were, skiting about, trying to make him think that we were trying to get him to not muck up the waters about confirming your identity, while we were sidling up to getting him to call an end to the curse, and then suddenly, we’ve bound a verbal contract!”

I remembered all the ‘Algy, you idiot!’ looks that she’s given me down through the years, wadded them all together and shot them right back at her. “Didn’t I TELL you last night, that he was the Prince of ruddy Darkness? How can you not understand ‘Prince of Darkness’? Well, I for one am NOT sitting still for this!”

“No, Algy!” Aunt Dorothy said in the voice I’d only heard her use once, when she saw her favorite hunter go over the wrong wall into the quicklime pit. “Good Lord only knows what that dastard will get away with, if we break this contract!”

“Well, since YOU foozled the drive, you will have to hack the ball out of the rough, old dear. I, for one, have done my duty by blood and brood, and then some.”

“We were acting as factors for the entire family.” Aunt Margery growled like she was a terrier and I was a rabbit. “We’ll ALL take it in the neck.”

I let it all drop with a typhoon of depressing air. “Well, there’s nothing for it. We must take this up with a Higher Court. DJIIVS!”

And Djiivs was there, quick as a wink and twice as winsome. “Yes, Miss?”

“Djiivs, the ‘Old China Hands’ have gone and fallen into the sinister Asiatic mastermind’s trap, and lugged me down into the viper pit with them. Or, instead of them, more accurately. Aunt Margery and Dorothy have gone and promised me in marriage to that sack of snakes, Hobsden.”

“Are congratulations in order, Miss?”

“No, a way out and a quick boat to France are in order! I need a loophole or something!”

“Well then, what precisely were the terms of this agreement?” Aunt Dorothy spelled it out as best she could. Apparently, Hobby had caught her on some variation of the term ‘as one of the family’, and stamped his Seal of Thoth on it before the a.r. could finish what she was saying. As it stood, Hobby had her promising to make him ‘one of the family’, by which he took to mean marrying ME.

“So, there you are Djiivs. Hobby has set his sights on dragging me to the altar where he’ll probably sacrifice me to whatever Lord of the Pit that he’s snuggling up to this week.”

“Well, Ladies, my understanding is that this contract hinges on the phrase ‘make you one of the family’, and Mr. Hobsden is forcing the issue of Miss Valentine, as opposed to some other member of the family, such as Miss Cynthia.”

“Nice to see that high heels haven’t affected your equilibrium, Djiivs.”

“Thank you, Miss. Well then, the solution is obvious. Make him one of the family.”

“WHAT?” I screeched, wounded to the quick by this crass betrayal by the one entity that I have always trusted and relied on.

“By ‘make him one of the family’, I mean ADOPT him.”

The mind-shattering elegant simplicity of what he was saying sank in with hushed, but all too due reverence. “Djiivs, you are a genius.”

“Of course I am, Miss. The terms ‘genius’ and ‘djinn’ share a common linguistic root from the Greek ‘genus’. Mister Hobsden is trying to rush a concession to his interpretation of the phrase, but the Law, both Civil and Celestial, will side with the more literal interpretation. By the Law of the Letter, if an agreement is not made in good faith by both sides, as is the case here, then the Letter, not the Spirit, of the agreement is in force. Therefore, the Brewsters are not obligated to give up any of their unmarried women-kin to Mr. Hobsden, merely to adopt him. And, since he hasn’t set any caveats as to the terms of that adoption, you can adopt him on any terms as you see fit.”

Staggering vistas of revenge and recompense for years of abuse and oppression opened before me. “Djiivs, you have not only snatched Victory from the jaws of Defeat, but you’ve set the hook in those jaws, and all but hauled it up on the dock to be stuffed and mounted! If I paid you, I’d double your salary! How DID King Solomon ever manage to get you in the bag?”

“Well, Miss, first of all, he WAS wise. Also, he cheated.”

Aunt Margery was afloat in gloat. “We’ll have Agatha adopt him, and put her to mending his ways.”

“Put him on a generous allowance,” Aunt Dorothy dived in, “shall we say five pounds a year?”

“Now, now, Aunt Dorothy,” I joined in, “we don’t want to spoil the lad! What say he goes to work at one of the family businesses?”

“The furniture moving business in Byglave- Feswick.” Aunt Margery gloated. “Start him off as an office boy, with a salary to match. What’s he going to do? Defy the family? Why, we’d just cut him off without a penny!”

“Why should he have it easy, lounging about in the office, where he can get his hands on the company books?” said I. “Let him start out hauling davenports, wardrobes and what-all with the lads! Let him learn the value of a shilling! And make sure that Aunt Agatha stays on the boy! We don’t want the shaver off frivoling away his time in clubs, drinking, dancing or gambling, now do we?” And if Aunt Agatha had her hands full keeping Hobby on the straight and narrow, well then, she’ll have less time to perch on the aching shoulders of her nieces, won’t she?

Djiivs did that thing where she pretends that she has a throat to clear. “While fostering Mister Hobsden with Mrs. Lestrade might amuse, may I suggest that the best person to see to young Mister Hobsden-Brewster’s parental needs would be Miss Valentine?”

“ME?” I blurted, almost spilling my bracer. “Having to be responsible, every time that that walking den of iniquity commits a felony? That would be like Old Home Week for him!”

“Maybe, but consider this. Mister Hobsden does not strike me as a masterful schemer, though he may enjoy viewing himself in that light. Rather, he is an adroit and nimble opportunist, who exploits new opportunities as they present themselves. I believe that Mr. Hobsden was merely looking for a quick infusion of cash when he caused the Curse to fall on Master Desmond’s shoulders. I doubt that he planned on Master Algernon being in attendance, but once he was aware of it, Mr. Hobsden arranged for Master Algernon to become the new custodian of the curse.”

“Arranged? You mean, Hobby can just take the curse off and put it on whomever he pleases, whenever he does please?”

“Not quite, Miss. I believe that Mr. Hobsden is aware when the Curse has passed from its former custodian, and is able to select whom the next recipient will be. But, once the Curse has been attached, he has no more ability to remove it than anyone else does. You will note that the spell that he finessed into Miss Yardley’s hands dictated that the caster- which would be you, Miss- accepted the curse willingly.”

“Is that what I said?”

“In so many words. As I was saying, I believe that Mr. Hobsden views marrying Miss Valentine as a way of obtaining most of what he desires in his life. He would gain control of Miss Valentine’s Trust Fund, he would have an extremely presentable wife whom would have no objections to his inevitable philandering, and he would no doubt gain considerable prestige among his own family for striking a blow against the Brewster family. And, with all due modesty, he has long coveted mastery over me, as well. If he married Miss Valentine, he could order her to hand over my binding device. As long as that possibility of acquiring all that remains, he’ll keep trying. And as long as he keeps trying, there’s a material chance that he’ll succeed.

However, if Miss Valentine adopts him, while she may only be his mother in the most honorary sense in the eyes of the Mortal Courts, in the eyes of the Eternal Courts, then she IS his mother. Even if she later disowns him, undoubtedly for disgracing the name of Brewster, he will still be her son in the eyes of the Eternal Court. That nicety would place him at a material disadvantage in any magical shenanigans that he might try. And should he arrange her premature demise, then he will be first in line to inherit the Brewster Curse.”

Aunt Margery nodded. “And, as you pointed out, we can always disown the rotter the second that he puts a toe over the line, as is our right, and not break the letter of the pact. Very good, Djiivs. You are a credit to your mas- er, mistress, more of a credit than she is to you. If you told me where Algy here hid your binding device, you could enter into service that better becomes you, Djiivs.”

Well, I never! One minute she’s selling me down the aisle, and the next she’s trying to snaffle my help. Djiivs turned her down, of course, but still! Musing on the generally untrustworthy nature of aunts, I left the a.r.s to spin their cunning webs of treachery and deceit. Hopefully, they’d limit their spinning to Hobby and leave their newest niece out of the web.

Drummond was waiting for me outside the lounge. “That Scapegrace is getting himself a drink. Have Djiivs pack your things, and I’ll tell Desmond to forward them to London. We’re leaving, now.”

“I’m frightfully grateful for the concern, Drummond old man, but why the skipping heels?”

“Dash it all, Algy, that viper is trying to force you into a marriage!”

“And exactly how is this different from when Aunt Agatha tried to force Clymnestra Bulstrode on me?”

“You know that I never approved of that. And Clymnestra may be a trifle… forward…”

“Forward? They could have used her at the Marne, to plow through barbed wire! Besides, as long as Hobby has that pact, I’m as good as his, until he decides to break it, or I turn back into a man. London, Paris, New York, Hollywood, Beijing, or the Plateau of Leng, no matter where I went, he’d have me. I might as well stay in my rooms. At least here, I can count on Weems to feed me.”

“Maybe, but if we were in London, at least Hobsden wouldn’t be putting his hands all over you.” As we were talking, Drummond was almost pulling me out of my shoes in his hurry to get me up the stairs.

“Well, I’m not precisely champing at the bit to get past the steeple and into the bridal chamber, you know. But Hobby has me over the old barrel. I guess that I shall have to lie back and think of England, as Victoria told Alice.” I hated to tease the poor chap, but it’s not like he hasn’t kept me floundering about in the dark, when he was playing a difficult lie. It will probably do him a world of good. Good Lord knows, I’m a better man for it.

“What’s all the fuss?” Grassy had met us halfway up the stair.

“We’re leaving.” Drummond said in his ‘forceful man of destiny’ voice.

“What? But, you can’t-” Never did learn what Grassy thought we couldn’t do, as Drummond shut my door in his face.

“Djiivs! Pack!” Drummond barked.

“Sir?” Djiivs murmured as she materialized in all her cerulean glory.

“What’s this?” he asked, as his jaw scuffed the carpet. “Oh, never mind! Just pack an overnight case for her, and get the rest of her things ready. We’re leaving immediately. You get the rest to Long Street in London.”

“We’re leaving, Miss?”

“Don’t ask me, Djiivs. It’s only my life, and as per usual, everyone else and their dog has more say in it than I do.”

Drummond’s familiar, Hugh, yapped at this. He was looking at my stocking’d leg with that more than strictly called for interest. “Don’t even think about it, Sport. With the day that I’ve had, I’d be more than willing to kick you into the pond, and it isn’t even lunchtime yet.”

“Well?” Drummond demanded, “Why aren’t you packing yet?”

“Very good, Sir.”

“Stop packing, Djiivs.” I told her. “We’re staying.”

“Very good, Miss.”

“Pack!” Drummond shouted, “How can you even THINK of staying?”

“Very good, Sir.”

“Don’t Pack!” I returned, “Because, my best chance of avoiding riding side-saddle for the rest of my life is right here! So, Hobby snuck an extra card or two into the deck. So what? The only time that he ever did anything straight, he was drunk! Am I supposed to run away, just because Hobby ‘Terror of the First Form’ Hobsden is playing the fox? To be a Brewster, is to be a Man! Oh … Damn, can’t use that one anymore.”

“Very good, Miss.”

“Pack! Algy, this is the Twentieth Century! There have been incredible breakthroughs in the Arts and Sciences. We’ll just… find a way around this!”

“Very good, Sir.”

“Don’t Pack! Drummond, even if Hobby weren’t the only way of getting rid of this beastly curse, I’d still have to stay! You know how picky the Chancery is about gross material transmogrifications! They only happen once every other blue moon, but there are always idiots dashing about, saying that their pig is really the Empress of Blandings, under a curse! I have to prove that I am under a curse, and that I am Valentine Algernon Brewster, or I’ll lose everything.”

“Very good, Miss.”

“Pack! Algy, the curse is documented seven ways to the Sabbath, there’s a clear line of transition from Aunt Ernestine, to Desmond, to you, and there was a passel of witnesses. You don’t need to be here! Let’s Go!”

“Very good, Sir.”

“Don’t Pack! Drummond, how can I draw on my Readies, looking like THIS, if the Chancery hasn’t examined, vetted, stamped, sealed and said a Pater Noster over me?”

“Very good, Miss.”

“Pack! Algy-”

“SIR,” Djiivs cut in more firmly than is her usual want, “Miss Valentine is safer here in Pelham Court than she would be in London. Here, she is surrounded by her family, who knows who she is, and the constabulary is at least familiar with the situation. In London, she will be an unknown young lady in the company of a man who still, I believe, has to answer questions as to his actions in a certain laundry in Dunfermline. Mister Hobsden could claim, with no small amount of veracity, that Miss Valentine was his fiancée, whom you had made off with. He could be in Gretna Green with Miss Valentine before you were even up before a Magistrate.”

Drummond ground his teeth, and looked for something to pound on. “Very well! But I’ll be damned, if I’ll let that blackguard Hobsden have his way without a fight!” He surged to the door, flung it open, and almost piled into Jocelyn, Grassy and Cecelia.

“Have we interrupted something?” Joss said archly. How can you interrupt someone going out the door, I wonder?

“Well, someone has to do something!” Drummond barked, and Hugh barked in agreement. I think.

“What’s gotten into him?” Cee-cee asked.

“Oh, he isn’t taking the news of my betrothal at all well.”

“Well, I should say not!” Grassy bleated. “How can you even THINK of it?” he turned that google eyed gaze of his on me. I’ve seen him look at other women that way. It was creepy then, and let me tell you, having it aimed straight at me was downright unnerving.

I groped around, desperate for a way out of his spotlight. “Sorry that you had to get dragged down here, Grassy, old boy. How’s Heloise taking you beetling off like this?”

“Heloise? Who’s Heloise?”

Good Lord, that was fast, even for Grassy. “Heloise DuBrec? The Goddess in whose name you bearded Major Sterling in his lair at the Tyche Club? The well-upholstered divinity that you brought to my flat?”

“Oh that! Just a fleeting infatuation, merely a passing crush, which was blown away like dust in storm-wind! What is Heloise, to an Angel, put down on an unworthy Earth-” Oh Lord, he’s waxing poetic, I could just smell the candle-grease.

Joss knew the signs and took forceful action to prevent a spontaneous poetry recital. “Well, what’s all this about you tying the knot with that snake Hobsden?”

“Oh, just the latest card that Hobby pulled out from his sleeve. The Aunts were dickering with him, and he pounced upon a chance phrase like a starving jaguar with a Seal of Hermes. Before the old dears knew what evil they had wrought, I was betrothed, unfair, but quite square, I’m afraid.”

“What?” They all said as one.

“You seem to be taking all of this calmly.” Joss said through slitted eyes.

“Well, after Phillippia Glestrow-fforbes, I’ve rather grown used to finding myself being railroaded into Matrimony Vile.”

“It’s an OUTRAGE!” Grassy asserted himself. Lord, I know that posture. It’s the same one that he used on that female tennis player, and wound up getting me banned from Wimbledon. “There IS a way out of this! And the way out is …” He stopped in mid-rant and wilted. “errr … Maybe Djiivs has an idea?”

Well, maybe at least Djiivs will have better luck keeping Grassy from dragging me into whatever mess was brewing between his ears this time. “Djiivs?”

“Yes, Miss?”

“Well, do YOU have an brilliant ideas as to how to be rid of the Hobsden Horror?”

“Well, since you ask, one notion does rather come to mind.”

“It does?”

“Yes, the most efficient way to handle this, is to fight a curse with a curse.”

“Curse? But the only curses we’ve ruddy GOT are the one on ME and that soggy mess of Wedgeware’s! Mind you, I don’t doubt that Sir Evelyn would give us his curse free of charge and with his blessing, but we don’t know HOW to get rid of it!”

“True, Miss, the idea here is to place a new, third curse directly upon Mister Hobsden. Allow him to experience the full horror, as it were, of this curse, and then offer to remove the curse from him, in exchange for his ending the Curse of the Brewsters. Once Miss Valentine is male again, then Mr. Hobsden’s pact of marriage is null and void, for obvious reasons.”

“Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“Well, for you or your aunts to place a curse on Mr. Hobsden directly would be to violate Hospitality, just as it would be for Miss Cecelia to search Mr. Hobsden’s room. However, if either Mister or Miss Yardley were to do this, then that would be an independent action taken by another guest, and not in violation of Hospitality.”

“But neither Grassy nor I can work magic.” Joss said bitterly.

“If Miss Valentine were to place a curse upon an object, and you or Mister Yardley were to arrange for Mr. Hobsden to acquire said accursed object, that would suffice.”

“Well then! There you are!” Joss said brightly. “Now, all that’s needed is for a conveniently cursed treasure of one sort or another!”

“Hold the bus.” Grassy said with more gravitas than really suited him, “All this means that Valentine will have to return to being a man.”

“Top Marks, Lionel!” Joss said with a relish that came from whereof I know not. “Now, what is there in this pile that we could curse, that Hobsden would be daft enough to try and take possession of?”

Djiivs did that mock throat-clearing business again. “Well, right off the top of my head, there IS King Cole’s Cup.”

“King Cole’s Cup? As in ‘Old King Cole was a merry old soul’?”

“Precisely, Miss. ‘Old King Cole’ was one of two now legendary kings of Northern Britain. King Cole the Magnificent was renowned for the opulence- as they measured opulence back then- of his court, and for the generosity that he showed to guests and his subjects.”

“And this cup is the bowl that Old King Cole called for, along with his pipe and the fiddlers three?”

“Yes, the ‘fiddlers three’ were more likely a body of poets and bards that were accustomed to King Cole’s court. Treating poets well has always been a sure way to ensure a good reputation.”

“Well, if was Old King Cole’s bowl, what are you lot doing with it?”

I took the wicket. “Well, family tradition has it that Eadfrid the Brewer had it, as a legacy from an ancestor, who was supposed to have been a brewer to the same Old King Cole. Let’s just say that Old King Cole didn’t become such a merry old soul by having gruel in his bowl.”

“But how could we explain King Cole’s Cup suddenly having a curse on it?” Cee-cee wondered. “I mean, usually curses are things that have been around for ages. You usually have to have a pretty meaty reason for laying a curse down on something, like someone whacked off the head of your One True Love, and that sort of thing, don’t you?”

“Actually,” I said, screwing a cigarette into my holder, which didn’t seem to really go with my ensemble, “you can lay a curse on anybody or anything, for any reason you that tickles your whim. The trick is not getting hit by the boomerang.”

“Boomerang?”

“Miss Valentine refers to what is known as ‘the Sword of Justice’ in magical circles.” Djiivs answered for me. “Practitioners of The Craft must be exceedingly careful about striking out at others, for if the blow isn’t in some way justified, it can be returned against them.”

“Oh, you mean that bosh in all those trash stories about the evil that the wicked warlock wishes upon the pure and virginal heroine coming back and striking him down, is real?”

“More or less, Miss, allowing for the excesses of bad writing. However, your point is well taken. May I suggest that this ‘curse’ take the form of a Charm to make whomever is not of the Brewster family, who takes the Cup in question from its niche, compelled to tell the truth.”

There are times when Djiivs inhuman brilliance dazzles even me. “I SAY! That is absolutely BRILLIANT! There are questions that I’ve been wanted to put to that lad since First Form!”

Cee-cee grinned, “You know, Valentine, I’m not entirely convinced that King Cole’s Cup is safe, as it is, especially with this Hobsden rake hanging about. Maybe, as a purely preventative measure, you understand, while Weems is taking it out for polishing, you could place some sort of protective charm on it?”

“An excellent notion, Cee-cee. Why don’t you tell the trusted retainer to break out the gold polish?”

Djiivs tried to dislodge something from her non-existent throat. “May I also suggest that, theoretically, should SOMEONE have possible, unauthorized plans for a particular, unnamed person to fall awry of an unspecified enchantment, then it would be best if those direct connected with the House of Brewster- including bound servants- had no direct knowledge of those plans? To violate Hospitality would be to invite the Sword of Justice to do its worst.”

Joss latched onto Grassy’s ear. “That means that it’s up to us, Lionel, and strictly on the hush-hush. Let’s go!” She dragged Grassy out, with him whimpering like a Spaniel. Cecelia clipped off to fetch King Cole’s Cup, and there we were, just the loyal servant and I.

“Djiivs, not that your adoption wheeze wasn’t top drawer or anything, but why didn’t you suggest this bit of business to They Who Must Be Avoided?”

“For the simple reason that it has a very low chance of succeeding, Miss.”

“Then why did you suggest it in the first place?”

“Well, first, it strikes me that Miss Jocelyn and Master Lionel need something to keep themselves occupied. I feared that if left to their own devices, one or the other, if not both of them might devise some elaborate scheme that might further complicate this quite delicate situation?”

“And this won’t?”

“Oh, I have no doubt that Master Lionel will find some way of preventing his sister from putting this new curse on Mr. Hobsden.”

“Why on Earth would he do that?”

“Because he is quite enamoured of you as you are, and doesn’t wish for you to return to your original state.”

“Oh well, he- yes, well he is- but would he? Oh, of course he would, the colossal fathead! What was that second bit? You said ‘first’.”

“Second, Mr. Hobsden is a man of considerable cunning, and is no doubt anticipating some manner of stratagem. If you were to placidly sit by, and allow it to happen, he may grow suspicious. However, if Major Brewster, and Mr. and Miss Yardley were to make efforts to prevent the formalization of the arrangement that he believes will result in your wedding, then he will be much less inclined to suspect that the arrangement truly favors you over him.”

“Major Brewster? You mean, you think Drummond has something brewing?”

“Oh, most assuredly. However, since this matter does not involve breaking down doors, or battering people in the jaw, or racing great distances in small amounts of time, I sincerely doubt that he will succeed.”

“But Djiivs- what if one of them actually manages to pull it off?”

“Then your problem will be solved, and the only trouble will be to decide whether to hold the victory celebration here, or in London.”

“A good point, well made, Djiivs.”

Djiivs set about collecting the ingredients for the curse, as I gave the book that Djiivs suggested, my full and unfettered attention. Uncanny, how Djiivs knew that there was just such a book in the Pelham Court library, what? Now, it has been said before, by more silver’d tongues than mine, but it bears repeating- nobody really respects Sorcerers or Wizards. When they hear that you’ve sworn the oaths, they either expect miracles of you and start twiddling their fingers at you, or they expect to find a rabbit hutch hidden in your hat. When a member of the Clergy is giving Mass, nobody asks them if they have a nice dry sherry instead. When a surgeon is cutting into a bloke, no one asks if they can play through. But let a Wizard start assembling the essential squares and circles, and suddenly, every Over-Your-Shoulder-Scholar is magnetically drawn there, and starts asking what that squiggly little thing there over in the corner is supposed to be.

After the third interruption, in a room that was supposed to be locked, I set Djiivs on the door. So isolated, I was barely able to get the ruddy thing done by the time that Cee-cee got King Cole’s Cup. I’m not my best operating in front of an audience- they still haven’t gotten the scorch-marks off the ceiling at Hoagwode’s from the time I took my Conjuring finals- so I told her to go find Hobby and keep him busy. I lit the brazier, called forth The Powers and- “Valentine, what ARE you doing?”

I jumped, broke off the incantation, and King Cole’s Cup let off a mournful *Pong!,* like a pub-keep lamenting the passing of his last regular.

“Valentine, what ARE you doing?” Aunt Gwen asked as she chugged into the room.

“Oh! A curse.”

“A curse?”

“Ah, yes.”

“But there’s no curse on King Cole’s Cup!”

“Ah, I beg to differ. That loud *pong!* noise was a sure indicator of a curse.”

“What made you think that there was a curse on this cup?”

“er, Cee-cee, that is, Cecelia was worried, what with all the curses flying about, that they might kick up any old curses that might be laying about, and well, with this cup, reaching back into the misty reaches of Pre-history, with cromlechs, wode, cattle raids, raven witches, and all that, well, she thought that it might be a good idea to be sure that there wasn’t anything untoward a-stir.”

“Untoward?”

“Well, Aunt Gwen, think about it. Old King Cole may have been ye merrie olde soul, but even merrie olde souls don’t go just giving away gold drinking bowls that a Jersey cow could bathe in, now do they?”

“King Cole the Magnificent gave that cup to our common ancestor, as a token of gratitude for exemplary service.” Aunt Gwen came back with loyal gravitas.

“Which is another way of saying that he found a way of getting rid of a cursed gewgaw AND paid off his bar tab with one stroke. By the way, how did you get in here?”

Djiivs faded into view. “I’m afraid, Miss, that Madam Brewster is the Lady of the House, and I could not presume to keep her from her own chambers.”

“What’s this about a curse?”

“Well, Ma’am,” Djiivs continued smoothly, taking this change in gait like a M.P. walking across the floor of the House of Commons to the other side, “it will be difficult to say exactly WHAT the curse was. When you interrupted Miss Valentine, the sound that we heard was the last weary vestiges of whatever malediction that had been laid down dim eons ago, finally released. It was no doubt some manner of triggered bane, and not having been triggered in so many years, both the trigger and the curse had faded out of context. Indeed, it is fortunate that Miss Valentine did release it. What with the Wedgeware Curse and the Curse of the Brewsters being in full force, they might have renewed the curse on the cup to its full malignance. Now, if we’ll leave Miss Valentine to her work, she’ll see to it that there are no lingering traces.”

Aunt Gwen allowed herself to be guided from the room, all too glad to distance herself from curses and what all. I adjusted my working turban- Drummond is the sort of chap who actually looks good in a jeweled turban, while I, on the other hand, tend to look as if I somehow got lost from a Turkish bath. Or at least, I did. Wonder how the old headwrap looks now?- and got back to work. I lit the brazier, called forth The Powers and- “Valentine!”

“Dash it all, Drummond!” I snapped as the power went *poof!* again. “Don’t you know better than to interrupt a working in progress?”

“What idiocy are you up to now?”

I trotted out my story about wanting to be sure about King Cole’s Cup, as it worked so nicely before. “Well, leave that alone! We have more important things to do!” Drummond grabbed me by the hand and dragged me out of the room.

“Djiivs!” I called back, “Make sure that the Cup gets back to its proper place!”

“Don’t worry about the Cup.” Drummond growled.

“What? Are you MAD? With Hobby ‘Bottomless Pockets’ Hobsden around? Uncle Gus would skin me alive if I just left that dingus laying about for the Hobsden to filch!”

Drummond hauled me out to the side of the house, where a car from the local constabulary was parked. “Hobsden won’t be a threat for very much longer.”

A chappie in a trench coat was tossing Hobby’s two-seater. A pair of uniformed officers were bringing out Hobby. He wasn’t in shackles, but the bobbies had him well in hand. Drummond assumed his ‘Hawkshaw the detective’ pose. “Well, Hobsden? What do you have to say for yourself?”

“What do I have to say?” Hobby returned far too smoothly, “All that I have to say, is that it’s a pretty sorry pass, when a man is dragged out to be accused of not sweeping up the chips under his motor seat. Shocking waste of a public servant’s time!”

“I wouldn’t say that this was dusty chips, Mister Hobsden.” The chappie in the trenchcoat, whom one assumes was one of the local CID johnnies, held up a foil packet about the size of, say, half a salami sausage. “As Major Brewster said, sir, what do you have to say?”

“Say?” Hobby assumed an over-tragic pose. “What CAN I say? It’s true! It’s all too TRUE! I couldn’t keep up the pretense anymore! My expenses where vastly overrunning my allowance! I had no choice! I HAD TO! I had to –“ He paused with a choke “-become a traveling tooth powder salesman!” He finished with a sneer.

“What?” the Inspector tore the foil open and tasted the white powder.

“Toofumbrite Tooth Powder,” Hobby said smugly, “for paste that gives you pearls. Easy on the enamel, the tongue AND the pocketbook.”

“WHAT IS THIS?” Drummond stormed up to Hobby.

“Well, I thought that I’d save you the bother of scaring up something that might pass for dope, Old Boy. I knew that you’d search my motor, looking for a place to plant something incriminating for the Inspector there to find, so I beat you to it. Knew you wouldn’t bother coming up with anything by yourself if you thought that you had something real.” He walked up to the Inspector and took the foil packet. “D’you mind? I don’t really trust their brand of tooth powder.”

Hobby swaggered over to me, taking in my turban and working robes. “What’s this? Looking to be rid of some curse or another?”

Trying feverishly to think of something that Joss would say, I adopted a pose and said, “Yes, but you’re still HERE.”

He pulled me close, gave me another of those sneaky hit-and-run kisses, and smarmed, “And you WILL be happy for it, Darling.”

As Hobby marched triumphantly back into the house, I walked over to Joss, who was giving Drummond the old ‘Nice Try, Hard Luck’ pat on the back. “Joss, d’you mind if I use your toilet kit?”

“Of course not, Algy. But why?”

“Well, I don’t doubt that Hobby raided my kit for the tooth powder for that wheeze, and I desperately need to get a vile taste out of my mouth.”

*****

Djiivs delivered the powder and I took to scouring the tusks with a will. As I spat out the last taste of Hobby’s tongue, I told her, “You might as well pack away the working gear, Djiivs. After all that, either King Cole’s Cup is cursed or it’s curse-proof. If I tried another working on that kickshaw, I’d probably open up every grave in the local churchyard.”

“If I might beg to differ-”

“What? You’re not going to trot out that ‘third time’s the charm’ chestnut, are you?”

“Well, Miss, in truth the Rule of Threes does indicate that a third attempt at cursing the cup might succeed. However, since whether the cup is cursed or not isn’t the salient point, that is irrelevant. No, rather, I was thinking in regards Sir Evelyn.”

“Oh? You know of a charm that will keep him at arms length? Or better yet, a good furlong’s length?”

“No, I was thinking rather of something a bit more inobvious. It strikes me that the Seal of Tethys, which has virtues against drowning, might also have charms against Sir Evelyn’s defensive effluvia.”

“But, Djiivs- I don’t OWN a Seal of Tethys. And I certainly can’t run down to London and have Lowe & Sons stamp one out for me, now can I?”

“This is true, Miss. But, I noticed last night that Miss Cynthia has a charm bracelet, as such has become fashionable. And upon this bracelet is a minor trinket that, with one or two adjustments, would make an excellent ‘blank’ for a Seal of Tethys.”

“And you’re saying that wearing this thingamabob would make being in old Wedgewood’s approximate vicinity less wearing on the upper respiratory tract?”

“Yes, that was the general thrust of my point.”

“Very well done, Djiivs! Go, find the appropriate tome, if they have one in the family archives-”

“They do, Miss.”

“Of course they do, or you wouldn’t have mentioned it. Go get the appropriate tome and fetch the ingredients. I will beg the loan of said bracelet from Cynthia, and may bygone Tethys have mercy on my sinuses!”

*****

Cynthia was, of course, only too glad to loan me her charm bracelet. You could tell that she had no idea as to why I wanted it, but one of the advantages of being a Sorcerer is that people expect you to have all sorts of veiled motives, which they’re happier not knowing. Thus armed, I gallantly spared Cee-cee from having to sit next to Sir Evelyn at luncheon.

I should have known better. Whatever one’s sex, the price of riding to the rescue is always saddlesores. The Seal of Tethys worked like a charm, well of course it would, it WAS a charm. But then I found myself faced with the full brunt of Sir Evelyn’s personality, without the distraction of nasal passages in full revolt. And it only got worse when Cynthia let the news of the Seal drop. Sir Evelyn had been keen enough before- if you ask me, I think the poor chap’s lonely- but after that, he started looking at me as if we were on the Lusitania, and I was holding the only spare life preserver.

I spent the rest of the afternoon doing laps around Pelham Court, trying to get away from either Sir Evelyn or Grassy, both of whom seemed to be out in full voice. I worked up such a sweat that I had to change clothes twice, just to stay fresh. I had managed to lose him, and was dreading the doing it all again as I headed down to dinner, when Joss sprang out from a door, grabbed me and hauled me into a linen closet. “You Idiot! You may have KILLED him!”

“What are you talking about?” I asked as I tried to ease my arm back into its socket. “I lost Sir Evelyn in the portrait gallery. And, I’ll admit, the picture of Great-aunt Elizabeth isn’t exactly Reynolds, but it’s hardly lethal, old girl.”

“Not Sir Evelyn, you simp! Drummond!”

“What about Drummond?”

“He’s in DANGER!” She hissed.

“What? Did one of the Aunts let drop about that Dunfermline matter, where Hobby could hear about it?”

“No!” Joss let it all out in a big breath and collected herself. “Just listen very carefully, Alg- er, Valentine. This is very important. I need you to somehow get Drummond to the drawing room, and inveigle him into having drinks there.”

“Drinks?” I asked, flabbergasted, “Joss, old darling, it’s almost time for dinner! Mind you, I wouldn’t mind a little something,

“Oh, will you STOP being such a complete ass for once in your life? Just DO it! Drummond’s life depends on it!” With that, she shoved me out of the closet and shut the door.

Oh Well, there’s something that the Chinese say, something having to do with caramels, that there are just some things in life that automatically fall to you, so there’s no use in whining about it, just get it over with. Apparently I’ve gone from being everyone’s errand boy to everyone’s errand girl. Well, she’ll tell me what all this is about when it’s over, and maybe it will make sense. There’s always a first time.

*****

I found Drummond in the magical library, furiously going through the books. As the Brewster family seat, they keep a complete magical library at Pelham Court for the members of The Craft, rather the way that Chuffy Havelock’s family keeps a law library, just in case one of the family needs to find a loophole on the fly.

“Finally remember the answer to that question at Finals at Hoagwode’s that’s been bothering you all these years?” I offered. “And you’re checking to see if you’re right?”

He scowled at me over the top of the book. “No, I’m trying to find a way of neutralizing that fool pact that Hobsden sprang on Aunt Margery. It’s ridiculous that anyone can just take a chance comment like that and bang it into a sacred contract with only a Seal of Hermes.”

“Drummond, I know that you were two forms ahead of us at Hoagwode’s, but you must have heard about what Hobby did to Potty Crocker.”

Drummond paused. “Was he that little chap who kept hopping down the halls like a frog?”

“No, that was Hoppy Burleigh. He was fool enough to volunteer for one of those hypnosis lessons, and he just wouldn’t let go of it. No, Hobby caught Potty Crocker while he was bragging, and Potty had to spend his entire Third Year walking backwards through the halls. It took the Enchantment Master all year to figure out how to get around the terms that Hobby sent. Drummond, you of all people should know what Hobby is capable of.”

Drummond slammed down the book. “How can you be so bloody calm about marrying that blackguard?”

“I’ve been shoved down the aisle before, and it still hasn’t taken. Why, Hobby’s just an uglier version of Eudora Fenton- Lord, what an appalling notion! Put down that book, old man, and join me in a drink, why don’t you? It’ll take the edge off, and let us enjoy dinner.” Drummond may be half bulldog, but he’s never turned down a good stiff drink when it was offered to him.

I got him to the drawing room, where Grassy was laying in wait. Drummond dragged him forcefully into a conversation as I practiced my alchemical skills. I trying my hand at making a Boxcar, when Joss lead Sir Evelyn in. “Well, here they are!”

“What ho, Joss!” I greeted her. “Where do they keep the Triple Sec?”

Joss waved me off and sicced Sir Evelyn on Drummond. Sir Evelyn had his ‘meeting the father figure’ expression on and he immediately buttonholed Drummond on something. Grassy and Joss came over to where I was excavating the bar in desperate search for the Cointreau. “Is that for Drummond?” she whispered. When I nodded, she found the Cointreau where it was cunningly secreted next to the grenadine, and pulled out a small dropper-bottle. Hiding it behind her back, she placed three drops into the drink, and started to add the triple sec.

Then the door to the drawing room opened dramatically, and Count Mazarin blared, “Your scheme is over, monster! I have you now!”

“What?” I bleated, “Aren’t you still in jail?”

“No mere jail can hold keep the Servant of Justice from his duty!”

“Then shouldn’t you use the Servants’ Entrance?”

Mazarin flared his nose hairs, and turned to Wedgewood. “Sir Evelyn! I have information that brings all the events here at Pelham Court into horrific clarity! That painted hellion over there, that unnatural disaster, brought down a curse upon his own cousin, so that he could play the hero, while indulging in his perverse desire to play the woman! And all this, to lull you into thinking that she is some sweet simpleton, and entice you into accepting the accursed charm that she is wearing!" ”

Wedgewood gave him the look that you give the old maid who thinks that there are fairies in her garden. “What ARE you talking about, Mazarin? I’ve been trying to talk her into giving me that Seal of Poseidon-”

“Tethys.” I corrected. “Sea nymph, or some such watery sort.”

“-Tethys, all day. And why would she want to foist a charm against drowning on me?”

Ah! Was THAT what he was about all day? Why didn’t he just SAY so? But before I could offer it to Sir Evelyn as a gift- provided that he took a bath instantly- Mazarin brayed, “Because it is NOT a Seal of Tethys! Rather, it is a Seal of Lilith! Upon accepting it, you would immediately conceive an insatiable craving for this travesty’s affections! This entire farce has been orchestrated to gain control of your fortune and businesses! As soon as her legal claim to your money was secure, she’d summon the Water Maiden, of whom you have lived your life in mortal dread, to bring your DOOM!”

Drummond came forward, bayonet fixed, but stopped halfway into No Man’s Land. Then he gave Mazarin an amused look. “Oh, I see now- Hobsden bailed you out of jail and fed you this line of tripe, what? I was rather wondering what Hobby has been up to, since lunch.” He turned to Joss and me. “Would you two ladies-” Mazarin gave an outraged snort at this, “- leave us to this for a moment? There’s no reason for you two to have to listen to this.”

Joss started to protest, but I said, “Well, at least it’s not in my bedroom while I’m in my bedclothes, this time.” Grassy and I pulled Joss out the door, and carefully shut it. I got Joss well away from the drawing room door, next to the stairwell.

“What was all that business with the drops, just now?” Grassy asked with his usual air of befogglement.

“They’re Drummond’s only hope!”

I shook my head. “Lord, we’re in the Third Act, it seems. What are you about, this time?”

“I planted the cup in Hobsden’s valise, as per the plan, just after Luncheon. Then, at Tea, I managed to spill on him.”

“Oh yes, I remember! Bally good shot, Joss!”

“Oh, do be quiet, you ninny!”

“Ninny? Is that a step up from ‘Idiot’, I wonder?”

“Well, you were too busy staying out of Sir Evelyn’s way- by the way, Val, if you’re going to stay like this, you really shouldn’t go encouraging men that way. You’re going to get the most frightful reputation as a tease and-“ Joss paused and snarled at me. “Oh Bother! Drummond! I managed to corner Hobsden and put a few hard questions to him. Algy- Val! He knew about King Cole’s Cup!”

“Oh, but-“ Grassy burbled, trying to get a word in, a sad situation of which I am far and away too familiar.

Joss plowed over him at full steam. “He said some such about the Cup actually having belonged to that Thrydwulf beast, and it had some sort of curse on it! He said that if anyone tampered with the curse on King Cole’s Cup, the curse would strike down the manliest son of the family! And that’s GOT to be Drummond!”

“Joss, dear, you lost me, right about where you said something about King Cole’s Cup belonging to Hobby’s reviled ancestor, Thrydwulf.”

“Val, Hobby was expecting something like this! Or maybe he was planning to steal the cup himself, and took precautions. He said that he had an amber phial in his valise, rolled up in the ball of socks with the dials on them. In the phial were drops that would prevent the curse of realizing itself, or some such.”

“And Hobby just told you this.”

“Well, it’s YOUR curse! He has to tell the truth!”

“Well…” Grassy tried again.

It must be contagious, as I pushed him aside as well. Maybe it comes with the high heels. “Maybe, but how do you know that my curse took? And how do you know that my curse affected him, and not, say, you?”

“Simple, simpleton! I asked him a few questions first, and he didn’t even try to put in a few wheezes for form’s sake.”

“But if you asked him straight out, then why didn’t he, oh say, try to beat you to the punch, and put the drops somewhere else?”

“Oh, he didn’t seem to realize that he was telling the truth! He just opened his mouth, and out it all rolled. My guess is that he thought that he was pulling my leg so hard that the stockings were coming off.”

Then we heard a snatch of someone whistling ‘Coming through the rye’, and Hobby came strolling down the stairs. “Why hullo, Joss! Looking smashing, as per usual!” He slinked over and smirked at me. “Good Afternoon, Darling!” He made to try and kiss me again, but Grassy managed to leverage himself between us. “Ah, well, I suppose that I’ll just have to wait,” he gave me a leering grin that would have gotten him both barrels of buckshot in the backside, if my father was still around, “for the wedding announcement.”

Once the drawing room door was safely between Hobby and us, Joss asked, “Do you think that he heard us?”

“I think that you’re loony, for taking anything that Hobby Hobsden has to say seriously, curse or no curse. I mean, King Cole’s Cup, property of this Thrydwulf cove? Oh, shush, Grassy! And more than that, Joss, WHY did you spike that drink? If Drummond’s in danger, why not just TELL him, and have him take his medicine like a man, instead of slipping it into his cocoa, like the nanny?”

“Are you completely barmy? I couldn’t ask Drummond to do that! I’d have to explain how I found out, and how I got the drops!”

“You can tell me without batting an eye, but perish forbid that you should tell Drummond that you’ve gone rummaging through another man’s drawers.”

“I can’t tell Drummond that I violated his family’s hospitality! You know how he is!”

“Well, you’re right there, Drummond rather IS the end-product that Lord Baden-Powell had in mind.” Then I remembered the little bottle that Joss had brought in. Now, Hobby is many things, but he’s never been convenient a day in his life. He probably slapped the doctor right back, the day he was born. “Still, this is fishier than a Catholic Friday dinner. I wonder what this stuff IS? Djiivs?”

Djiivs shimmered into existence next to me. I explained, and she touched a bit of the liquid to the tip of her tongue. She smacked her mouth a bit, and pronounced, “Essentia Deimos.”

“For form’s sake, assume that Grassy here doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It is an alchemical distillation of the very essence of mortal terror. Partaking of this solution would completely render the taker’s resolve inert. Three drops of this would render King Richard the Lionhearted into Little Dickie the Mouse.”

Joss looked about, completely out of her depth. “But why would a fear potion cure Drummond of some horrible curse?”

“I rather doubt that it would, Miss.” Djiivs hadn’t lost any of that savoir fair in the translation to the ladies’ powder room. “However, from what I know of Mister Hobsden’s proclivities, it would be an excellent way to coerce some manner of hold onto Major Brewster.”

“What? But how?” Joss gawped, “The Curse! He couldn’t lie!”

“Well, actually-” Grassy tried yet again.

“Joss, we are speaking of Hobby ‘an ace up every sleeve’ Hobsden!” I rose to the occasion. Maybe Hobby’s little trick backfired on him. Maybe I was born to play the plucky heroine. “For all we know, he has a phial of a different concoction rolled up into every ball of socks that he owns. And how many socks with dials does he have?”

Then there was a scream from inside the drawing room. As one, we bolted for the drawing room door. A gnat’s whisker from mashing my nose, the door swung open, bang, with Mazarin standing there, wild-eyed. He took one look at me, screamed, and ran down the hall as if his coattails were on fire. Now, this has happened to me before, but only when I dropped by for a visit unannounced.

Looking through the door into the drawing room, we saw Drummond and Sir Evelyn looking back at us with airs of complete bewilderment. Drummond was massaging the knuckles of his right fist, and Hobby was sprawled on the floor, the unmistakable imprint of Drummond’s fist fresh on the side of his jaw. “Extraordinary thing.” Sir Evelyn said, in tones of wonder.

“Hobby finally got what he’s needed for years, and I MISSED it?” I bleated.

“Oddest thing.” Drummond said, matching Sir Evelyn’s befogglement, “That Mazarin bird was yapping complete and utter nonsense, as per usual, and then Hobsden came in, and started acting as if I were back in First Form and he were the Best Boy. He said some demmed irregular things, so I poked him one. Then Mazarin let out a screech like a wet cat and lit out of here. Mind you, I always thought that he was a few bales shy of a rick, but I always thought that, at least he had more of a spine than THAT!”

Joss picked up the tumbler from the floor. “Drummond! Drummond, did you drink this?”

“Why, no.” He returned, only slightly less bewildered than before. “Mazarin helped himself to that, before I had a chance.” Well! Really! I knew that the French Aristocracy was a trifle odd, but really!

Joss rooted about the bar. “Where is it? Drummond, there was a small amber phial on this bar, I know that I left it here, where IS it?”

“Little eye-dropper thing?” Sir Evelyn asked, getting into the swing of it.

“Yes!”

“That bird Mazarin was waving it around, saying that it was proof positive of something or another, and tucked it in one of his pockets.”

“Oh, CHRIST! Those were some sort of terror potion that Hobby finessed onto me! Drummond, you’re under some sort of curse! They’re supposed to be the cure!”

“Jocelyn, what ARE you raving about?”

“Drummond, darling, we don’t have TIME! GO! All of you! Find Mazarin, and get that phial back! I’ll search Hobby’s valise again, and see if there are any other phials, that might be the real cure! Djiivs, come with me, and test the bloody things. Can’t expect Hobby to conveniently label the blasted things!”

“Joss-”

“At the very least, there should be an antidote to the Essence of Terror! You don’t think that that-” she waved dismissively at the inert mass on the carpet, “- would keep a potion like that around, if he didn’t have a counter-agent ready at hand, now do you?”

Drummond, still not clear on the situation, but definitely in his element again, took charge. “Very well! Joss, you go search Hobby’s room. Djiivs, you help her. Valentine, you go find Desmond and get him to help you search for Mazarin. If nothing else, we’ve got to find him before he goes and hurts himself. Sir Evelyn, you stay here with Hobsden. If he wakes up, we don’t want him muddying the waters any more than he already has. Hugh! The games afoot!” With that, he stormed out of the drawing room, his familiar champing at the bit. Drummond places a world of confidence in that dog’s nose. Don’t ask me why, I’ve never met a bulldog who could smell his own breath.

*****

I found Desmond and Cynthia just as they were coming down to dinner, and set them on the trail. After all, Mazarin was precisely the sort who would fall down, hurt himself, spend the summer convalescing at the family’s expense, and still sue.

Djiivs offered the suggestion that I go stand watch by the lake. As Mazarin still thought that I was some sort of evil genius, the sight of me there would frighten him off, and keep him from falling into the lake and drowning. Ah well, at least this time, I’m not the one thrashing about the bushes, getting into the brambles, and making a shambles of my trousers. And, if there’s anyplace in the place where I can be sure that Sir Evelyn won’t be bothering me, it’s on the pier.

So, there I was, alone in the gloaming, with a chill breeze from off the lake blowing up my skirts, and getting a rising damp feeling. I hadn’t heard anyone hallooing in the dark for a bit, and I was beginning to wonder if this was one of those things were everyone gets all excited, and the balloon goes up, and they forget that all about me until they’re toasting Drummond, and get to ‘Oh, and Algy, too.’ Oh yes, once again, Joss had talked me into a wild goose chase. And it’s not like I particularly like Mazarin, after all.

I picked myself up and made ready to toodle along to dinner, when I heard someone calling my name. Ah! Finally, it’s all settled, and they remembered me for once, and I can safely go to dinner and be fed without the Aunts ripping into me for deserting my post. I looked around for whoever was calling, but I couldn’t see anyone. Silly asses, walking around in the lowering dusk without a torch. I called out, but all I heard in response was my name again. I followed the sound of my name to the end of the pier, where the voice seemed to be coming in from off the water. I leaned over, like Mary Pickford looking for whatshisname in the swamp, trying to see who was daft enough to be rowing on the lake at this hour.

I leaned far over the edge of the pier, and hallooed for all I was worth. And in repayment of my efforts, something sprang out of the water, latched onto me with a grip of ice, and dragged me under.

*****

The shock of the cold all over was the worst part, though the clammy feel of hands holding me came in nose to tail behind. Something that felt uncomfortably like water grass wrapped itself around me, and a pair of cold, clammy lips forced themselves against mine. Well, Hobby has really gone over the edge this time! Really! “Dash it all, Hobby, if you MUST take liberties, would you at the very least do it where it’s DRY?”

“Who’s ‘Obby?” asked a feminine, and none to well bred voice. “And why ain’t you drownin’?”

“Oh, terribly sorry, Miss, mistaken identity. But tell me, precisely why did you snatch me out of that dry, if rather draughty pier?”

“You’re not answerin’ my question.” A pert and lovely face that was scowling to match the cross voice appeared out of the murk. The rest of her was draped in lake weeds, which I imagine was supposed to ethereal and surreal, but only managed to look like she’d gone into one of those avant-garde little shoppes and the salesgirl convinced her that lake weed was THE coming thing. So, now she has to brave it out, or admit that she was snookered by a three pound a week shopgirl. “How’s it that you ain’t givin’ up the last breath? ‘Onestly, we have had an understandin’ goin’ back for ruddy centuries- I find Sir Wedgeware, drag ‘im down ‘ere into the wet, and ‘e drowns, givin’ up ‘is last breath, which I gets. It’s a fair bargain, an’ I’ve held up my end of it, so you hold up yours. Panic already, and give up that last breath.”

“And why on Earth would I go and do a silly thing like that?”

“Because there’s a ruddy contract, that’s why! I gets a Wedgeware down ‘ere, and ‘e drowns! Now, ‘ow simple is that?”

“Ah, well, there you are then!” I brightened considerably. “I’m not a Wedgeware! Not even by marriage. You must be B’flurb’thblupt then?”

“My name is B’flurb’thblupt.” She said, even more crossly.

“That’s what I said. B’flurb’thblupt.”

“No, you said, ‘B’flurb’thblupt.”

“Exactly. Your name- B’flurb’thblupt.”

“NO, my name is B’flurb’thblupt!”

“That’s what I said! B’flurb’thblupt!”

“No, you said, ‘B’flurb’thblupt’. My name is B’flurb’thblupt.”

“And the difference IS?”

“Well, if you need to be told, then you ain’t worth tellin’.” She sniffed. And precisely HOW does something that breathes water sniff?

Seeing that I’d rather put my foot in it again, I tried to smooth things over. “Ah well, at any rate, Miss, my name is Valentine Brewster, and it seems that there’s been some sort of ghastly mistake in identity on both our parts.”

“Oh, there’s been some sort of bollix-up ‘ere, but it weren’t on MY side!” She peered at me suspiciously. “And if you AIN’T a Wedgeware, ‘ow come you got the Wedgeware Curse on you, then?”

“I do?”

“We wouldn’t be ‘avin’ this conva’sation iffen ye didn’t, Sport.” She looked at me even more closely, and then poked my front with a finger. “And what’s this, then? You ain’t even MALE! ‘Ow am I su’posed to take yer last gasp, iffen you ain’t a bloke?”

Well, this was a wrinkle that I never expected. “And you can’t drown women?”

“Oh, I COULD, but what do you take me for? A ruddy Kelpie?”

Well, since a Kelpie takes the form of a horse, I freely admitted that such a mistake was beyond even my feeble powers of observation. But she was only getting started. “Faugh! To think that I came all the way ‘ere from the bloody SUDAN, just to grab a bird!” She gave me another of those ‘this is all YOUR fault’ looks that I’m all too familiar with. “Ennyway, ‘ow did you get the Wedgeware Curse on ye, ennyway? The Curse is su’posed t’ pass from Fawther t’ Son, or a’ least heir t’ heir wi’ the coronet! Oh, don’t tell me, the Wedgewares are so far gone that there’s only girl heirs ennymore?”

“Er, NO, as I told you, my name is Brewster. No relation, whatsoever.”

“Then ‘ow did YOU get the curse? Only men can get my curse laid on ‘em!”

“Ah well, there you are! You see, only two days ago, I was still a strapping example of the masculine persuasion! But then, I rather messed things up a bit, and took over the Brewster Curse from my cousin Dizzy- I say, you don’ think that you mistook the Brewster Curse for the Wedgewood Curse, by any chance? Simplest thing in the world to do, after all, I mean Sir Evelyn’s been mooning around me, so the stink- and believe me, I DO mean REEK- might have rubbed off a tad?”

“Na, na, na, tha’s not the way. You got the Wedgeware Curse on you, and I speak as an author’try. Say, what does this Brooster Curse DO, ennywey?”

“Well, as should be obvious, as I just said that I USED to be a strapping sixteen stone paragon of manly virility, the Brewster Curse changes the party of in question into a member of the fair sex.”

“So, you USED to be a guy, but now yer a gel, and you got the Wedgeware Curse on you.”

“Well, I guess that I’ll have to take your word as to the third part, but as to the first and second part, I’ll have to give a rousing Yes.”

“OH!” B’flurb’thblupt flapped around in sheer exasperation. “Oh! This is blood lovely! Simply buh-loody SPEC-tacular! I wear myself out haulin’ my stumps here all the way from the Sudan, just to find a GEL, who won’t even drown, as per arrangement! By the way, you nevver did say, ‘ow come you ain’t giving up the last breath? I mean, even iffen I can’t take yer last breath, at the very least you could be a sport and drown, so’s I can go onto the next one.”

Now, I don’t know if a Water Maiden can remove a Seal of Tethys while it’s operating, and that sort of experimentation has never been my long suit in the first place. “Sorry,” I lied with my most winning smile, “haven’t a clew.”

“Oh! Perfect! Now, I’ll have to trail along aft’a ye, fer the rest’a yer life, and just wait and ‘ope that ‘oo-evver in’erits the curse will at least have the simple decency to drown when ‘e’s expected to!” B’flurb’thblupt stomped off into the murky waters of the pond, muttering loudly about the stupidity of people who breathe, men who don’t have the common sense to stay men, how a contract is a contract, and the iniquity of the world in general.

*****

I tried to climb out of the water back onto the pier, but while Tethys’ Seal might protect me against drowning, biting cold is a completely different thing. Either that, or there’s something to all that drivel about men having better upper body strength than women. So, I slogged over to the edge of the pond and came splashing out of the water onto dry land draped in pond weed. As I stood there shivering, I desperately tried to think of some spell that would ward off hypothermia, but everything that I could think of needed things that I didn’t have. Also, I rather doubted that I’d make it back to the house before I fainted or some such feminine thing. I tried calling Djiivs, to have her whisk me back to the house and some hot toddy, but for once, the perfect servant wasn’t answering.

Then I heard someone calling my name again, and this time it wasn’t B’flurb’thblupt. Believe me, once heard, that briny bint’s voice is never mistaken. I called back, and Grassy came bouncing along. “Valentine! What happened? Did you fall into the lake?”

“No, I was bloody well PULLED into the bloody lake!”

“Are you all right?”

“No, I think I lost my monocle when I fell in!”

“Oh, look at you! You must chilled to the bone!”

“No, turning blue and chattering one’s teeth is all the rage in avant-garde circles. I’m surprised that you hadn’t heard of it!”

Grassy pulled me close and started rubbing his hands over my arms, to warm me up. Which led to him rubbing other parts of me. “Ah, Grassy, I rather don’t think-”

Grassy looked me intently in the eyes. “Valentine, I love you.” And then he mashed his mouth into mine. Now, my first reaction was to pull away, or at the very least vomit. But, rather, the most extraordinary thing happened. Instead of pulling back, I sort of went all gooshy, and my mind went all sparkly, and my heart started to- oh, Lord, I sound like one of those penny dreadful romance novels! But it really was like that, the smut peddlers must be onto something. I clutched onto Grassy like he was the last life preserver on the Lusitania, and well, he was nice and warm…

Anyway, the next thing you know, I’m on the ground, and Grassy is on top of me, and we’re rubbing against each other in the most rippingly delightful way. I didn’t even mind the gravel against my bottom, even though Grassy was pounding it down into said gravel like a pile driver. You know, it is the most extraordinary thing, how something that small can feel that BIG. And then His Majesty’s Third Royal Engineering Corps Marching Band decided to set off a fireworks display, even though Guy Fawkes’ wasn’t for months.

Then Grassy rolled off of me, and the first thing out of my mouth was, “Oh. So, THAT’S what all the fuss is about!”

Grassy got up, started to put his clothes aright, and was blithering about how sorry he was, and it was all a mistake. I stopped him. “Not to worry, Grassy! If you made a mistake, we can always do it again, until you get it right!”

Grassy flustered, and said, “Ah, no, that’s not what I’m talking about. You see, I didn’t find out what all the bother was about, until I stopped Dizzy and he told me. You see, that blaggard Hobsden couldn’t have been telling the truth when Jocelyn questioned him.”

“Why not? If the curse that I put on King Cole’s Cup-”

“Hobsden never touched King Cole’s Cup. I took it out of his valise after Joss put it there, and hid it in the butler’s pantry.”

“Grassy! Why did you do something that daft? I mean, I’ve- oh! Oh, never mind. You can always make up for this mess that you’ve created.” I took his arm. “But, I’ll insist that this time, it’s in a nice warm bed, with a decent mattress.”

I took him by the arm, and steered him in the general direction of the house- and hopefully a nice warm shower. I wasn’t quite as cyanotic as before, but I was still dripping wet. As I remember, it does take the old junior member a while to get his wind back after a few rounds of whatnot. But I figure that a fine strapping young bloke like Lionel should be ready to go once more into the breach, dear friends, in the time that it should take me to get clean and changed. And well, my experience before with this sort of thing always left me wondering, ‘I paid two pounds five for THAT?’ Now, it’s nice to be getting my two pounds’ worth!

*****

I was barely in the front hall when Aunt Gwen appeared in a puff of smoke. “Valentine! What ARE you dripping on my carpet?”

“Well, I’m hardly an expert on the bottom of your private lake, Aunt Gwen, but from the looks of it, I’d say duckweed.”

“Oh, Lord, Algy, I mean, Valentine, you don’t mean to say that you fell in?”

“No, I did not bloody well fall in, I was PULLED in!”

Suddenly a rather keen sort of man in a trench coat, whom I recognized as the local Police Inspector that Drummond had tried to sic on Hobby, came out of the drawing room. “Excuse me, Miss, but are you saying that Major Drummond Brewster tried to drown you by pushing you into the lake?”

“No!” I said, not a little taken aback. “Whatever would make you think that?”

“Well, when he was down at the police station earlier, your fiancée, Mister Hobsden, intimated that Major Drummond had tried to frame him with that phony dope wheeze, as a way of clearing the way for himself to gain your favors. That, combined with the fact that he’s a wanted man-”

“Oh, that? That’s just that Dunfermline pother. Give the Aunts a week or so, and that should sort itself out.”

The detective chappie leaned forward keenly. “Miss Brewster, if you’re only saying this, as you’re fearing for your life, we can provide protection.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! The only person that I need to be protected from is that hound, Hobsden!”

“But… he’s your fiancée!”

“Those are usually the persons that I need to be protected from, Inspector.”

“But then, who tried to drown you?”

“B’flurb’thblupt.”

“Excuse me, Miss?”

“I said, ‘B’flurb’thblupt’, Inspector, and I meant it.”

By this time, a bit of a crowd had gathered, and Sir Evelyn dropped his jaw on the carpet. “B’flurb’thblupt? But why would she try to drown YOU?”

The Inspector shushed everyone and said, a trifle loudly for someone not in his own front hall. “What the devil is a ‘B’flurb’thblupt’?”

I waved at Sir Evelyn. “Ask him, he’s the expert. And why would you think that Drummond, of all people, tried to drown me?”

“Well, when a man is wanted, and the woman that he loves is affianced to another man, he’s liable to do some desperate things.”

“And what does Drummond have to say about all this?”

“Well, Miss, that’s the thing. When he heard that we were here to ask him a few questions as to that matter up in Scotland-”

“Dunfermline.” I offered.

“Precisely, Miss. Well, he jumped out the window and went tearing off in some two-seat motor.”

“What? How? His motor isn’t even here! He had to come up with Grassy.”

“I’m afraid that Major Brewster was in dire need of transportation.” The Inspector jumped a bit as Djiivs hove into view. “So, I allowed him the loan of the keys to your two-seater.”

“Well THERE you are!” I upbraided my derelict servant of the body, “And WHERE were you, when I was blowing pond-scum out of my nostrils and almost freezing to death?”

“A thousand pardons, Miss. Still, as you were saying, you are soaked through. I’ve taken the liberty of laying out your dressing gown and slippers, a fresh outfit for dining, and starting up a hot shower for you.”

“Now that’s the Djiivs that I’ve come to rely on! You’ll have to pardon me, Inspector, but I’ve pneumonia to duck! Aunt Gwen, would you hold dinner? I’ve had a hard day, and I’ll need more to sustain me than soup and a sandwich.” With that, I turned and trudged up the stairs, trying not to shed duckweed on the carpet.

*****

Joss and Sir Evelyn were after me like hounds on the scent, and cornered me on the upper landing. “Excuse me, Miss Valentine,” Sir Evelyn gasped, “but HOW? WHY? Why would B’flurb’thblupt attack you?”

“Actually, it’s ‘B’flurb’thblupt’.” I corrected him.

“Are you sure about that? B’flurb’thblupt?”

“I got it straight from the hippopotamus’ mouth.”

“Dash it all, Alg- Valentine,” Joss blurted, “WHY would Bubble-blup-”

“B’flurb’thblupt.”

“So WHAT? Why would she try to drown you?”

“Well, from what she said, apparently, I picked up a bad case of the Wedgewood Curse somewhere along the line. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to take measures that I don’t catch a Cold to go along with all these curses.”

Sir Evelyn took me by the shoulders. “Are you telling me that I’m no longer cursed?”

“Yes, and speaking for my Aunt and Uncle and the rest of the family and guests, we’d all vastly appreciate if you took advantage of this reprieve to renew your acquaintance with soap, water, and talcum powder.”

*****

After her inexcusable lapse at the lake, Djiivs was back on her stride. I was in the shower and gluttonously soaking up all the lovely hot clean water before Sir Evelyn could get to the other shower. As I was scouring out the nooks and crannies, there was this horrible moaning and creaking that rang throughout the house. Then the bathtub shuddered and shook, and the hot water coming out of the spout suddenly went murky and cold. The marshy muck puddled near the drain, and up popped B’flurb’thblupt!

“Ah HAH!” She exulted, “GOT you!”

“You again?”

B’flurb’thblupt’s good mood melted away like the good booze at a charity shindig. “What? You again?”

“That was what I just said.”

“Nah, nah, nah, this can’t be right.” She shook her head. “I KNOW that I smelled a Wedgeware in the water. Pretty ripe, too.”

“Ah, well then- Sir Evelyn must finally have gotten to the shower. Now, if you’ll please leave, so that I can get some more hot water, before he uses it all up…”

“But I followed the Curse ‘ere…” B’flurb’thblupt continued on, ignoring me. “Oh, bloody ‘Ell, that means that I can’t track ‘im ennymore! And YOU won’t drown.”

I tactfully omitted telling her that I wasn’t wearing Cynthia’s charm bracelet- after all, who wears jewelry in the shower?- and the Seal of Tethys was still on it. Shouldn’t give a lady an opportunity to make a mistake that I’d regret for the rest of my life, you know…

“And even if you would drown, it’s not like it’d do ME any real good,” she went rattling on. Then she fixed me with a hopeful eye. “Still, are you sure that you won’t change your mind?”

“Change my mind? As to what?”

“Why Drownin’, of course! After all, ev’ryone’s gotta go even’shully, and well, drownin’s just the best way t’go! None’a that bleedin’, or poisonin’ cramps, or gunshot wounds, or ‘angin’. No, as much as I ‘ate t’ toot my own ‘orn, I really must say that drownin’ is the very best way t’ shuffle off this mortal coil and all that. Verra’ peaceful, verra’ calm. Pleasant, even, oncest y’stop thrashin’ about. Why all the gentlemen that I’ve ‘elped to pass over ‘ave told me that it was just about the nicest way to start pushin’ up daisies there is.”

“As tempting as you make that sound, I think that I’ll pass. My Aunt Gwen has a cook that makes a partridge glassee with wild rice that would be a crime against nature to miss. Now, would you please mind leaving this tub, while there’s still some hot water left?”

“Are you SURE-”

“Excuse me, B’flurb’thblupt , but were you invited into this household?”

B’flurb’thblupt left, spiraling down the drain with a pout.

*****

After her dereliction at the lake, Djiivs was back on her mark. She gave me something, well, rather odd tasting, to take the chill off and got me dressed and presentable for dinner

After being crowded by them, I found that the dinner table was suspiciously bereft of men at dinner. Even Sir Evelyn, squeaky clean for once, was huddled over at the far side of the table from me. “I know that Drummond is headed for Calais- if he knows what’s good for him- but where are Hobby and Grassy?”

“Well, I’m not sure as to Mister Yardley,” Aunt Gwen said stiffly, “but I’ve sent that Mr. Hobsden of yours his dinner up in his room. Bringing that maniac Mazarin back into the house, after pulling a pistol of all things on Desmond! Really! I don’t know what you see in him, Valentine!”

“Oh, I’m not complaining, Aunt Gwen! If anything, it allows me to enjoy your delicious pheasant, without feeling that I have to keep track of the flatware.”

*****

After dinner, I was exposed yet again to what the Ladies really talk about, when the Gents are sequestered by themselves.

“So, Valentine.” Aunt Margery asked in her ‘Headmistress dressing down the girl who got caught wearing makeup’ voice, “exactly HOW did you manage to contract both the Brewster AND Wedgeware curses?”

“Well, Aunt Margery,” as I paused in my ongoing quest for the perfect Horse’s Neck, “to be honest, I haven’t the foggiest. The only reason that I know of it, is that B’flurb’thblupt told me herself, face to face. Twice.”

“Twice?”

“Yes, she took a second whack at me, as I was showering. By the by, Cynthia, would you mind terribly, if I held onto this charm bracelet? At least until I can get down to Lowe’s and have them tinker one up for me.”

“Don’t give it a second thought, Val.” Cynthia said warmly. Dash it all, why couldn’t women act this way to me, back when it would have done me some good? “Hold on! The amulet!”

“Which amulet?”

“The amulet that Dizzy was wearing, the first time that Algy tried to remove the curse! Dizzy was wearing a St. Walpurgia’s medal the first time that Algy cast the spell!”

“Quite Right!” I popped, “I knew that that spell took!”

“But it didn’t remove the curse! Dizzy had to take off the medal, and you had to cast the removal spell again, remember? But if the first removal curse worked, then it would have affected the nearest available curse, wouldn’t it?”

“Which would have been on that idiot, Wedgeware.” Aunt Margery snarled. “Yes, Cynthia that does make sense. The trick with curses is that you can’t just be rid of them; you have to either end them by completing some set condition, or you get some Higher Power to intervene, or you place the curse on someone else.” She gave me one of her patent pending icy glares. “The trick is finding someone daft enough to willing accept the curse.”

I deftly sidestepped any further acrimony by steering Aunt Margery onto a subject that was even dearer to her heart than censure- skullduggery. “So, how is that contract with Hobby coming along? You know, locking him up in his room only gives him more time to stuff yet another deck of cards up his sleeve.”

Margery gave a smile that would have given your average hellhound on the moor second thoughts. “Ah, the tricksy Mister Hobsden has read the formal agreement that Dorothy and I wrote up, and artfully found the little booby-traps that we put in for him to find. He thinks that he’s getting what he wants, and has agreed to the wording. Tomorrow morning, we’re going to write it all down on vellum and seal the bargain.”

Joss had wandered over, and drawled, “I know that you lot are up to something. An Irishman would sooner kiss the King’s foot, than you lot would let Hobsden marry Valentine. But I do wish that you’d let me in on the plot. I loathe being left out in the cold, with my nose against the glass.”

“Why, Miss Yardley,” Aunt Margery sniffed, “are you insinuating that the Brewsters would stoop to chicanery?” With that she turned and joined Aunts Dorothy and Gwen, no doubt to plot some even viler perfidy.

Joss turned to me. “Well, you seem to know- what ARE they up to?”

I took a deep breath and said, “Sorry, Joss, old thing. Strictly hush-hush, you know. And after that ridiculous scene with Hobby and King Cole’s Cup, I’m afraid that your credit is rather used up in this shop- by the way, they found the second footman, trying to sneak out of the house with it. What was Grassy thinking? And speaking of Grassy, where DID he get at? It’s not like him to miss out on a free meal!”

“Oh, didn’t you hear?” Joss smirked at me. “As soon as you went upstairs, Grassy let on with some drivel about Drummond being up against it, and needing someone at his side. He asked me to send his kit to his usual address in Paris, hopped into his motor, and was off like the hounds of hell, or worse, the Inland Revenue, were after him.”

“You mean, he just… beetled off? Just like that? After all that twaddle about being so totally devoted? The little beast!”

Joss sighed, “Yes, oddest thing. Usually, he only scarpers off like this, after he’s had his wicked way with the girl.”

“Oh, he’s one of THAT breed of dog, is he?” Cynthia asked, with the air of one who’s had them nipping at her heels.

“Oh, yes. And it’s always the same. First, he’s the devout worshipper at the feet of an earthbound goddess. Then, he’s following her about all over the place. Then he somehow manages to her into a corner, and suddenly, he’s booking passage for parts unknown. Then, after a few months, he’s back and at the feet of some other idol.”

“What?” I yelped. Then I recovered. “You mean, that I’ve gone through sixteen different kinds of Hell, just so that google-eyed squit can go for a ride on a carnal merry-go-round?”

Joss smirked at me. “Look at the bright side, Val. At least you didn’t have Lionel mooning around your flat, composing hymns to the deity du jour.”

“Oh? And how many times have you put your all too, too solid flesh betwixt him and his latest religion’s twenty stone bishop?”

Joss let out a stream of smoke from her cigarette. “Well, you won’t have to worry about that anymore. No, now all that you have to do is worry about what latest scandal you’re going to get dragged into as Mrs. Rupert Hobsden.”

*****

I managed to keep Hobby out of my bedroom that night, and off my lap at breakfast. Though, both were most decidedly more easily said than done. After breakfast, Aunt Dorothy herded us all into the library. There, she pulled out the vellum and goose-quill, and proceeded to write out in long hand the terms that they’d negotiated with the conquering Hobsden, reciting as she committed it to text. The body of the agreement took up four pages of Latin, Greek, and more legal argy-bargy than a person should be subjected to, without being in the dock.

When that was done, she scribed out one of those cover pages, with the ‘we, the here undersigned, do agree to the mess on the pages below’ part. Then she whipped out a penknife, cut herself on her left thumb, and squeezed a drop into the inkwell. Uncle Gus, in his role as Guv’nor of the place, Aunt Margery, Hobby and I all added drops of our own to the mess.

Aunt Margery produced some blue sealing wax, but Hobby brought out a stick of red wax of his own. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to sign first, as I AM the husband to be.” Aunt Margery’s eyes flickered ever so slightly, but she said nothing. Hobby signed the cover sheet with a flourish that that chappy who heads off the American Declaration of Independence would have envied. He pulled out his Seal of Hermes, and mashed it down into the soft wax, muttering something under his breath. Then I, as the next most directly involved party, signed and sealed- without the bravura and fanfare, I might point out. The Aunts and Uncle Gus did their parts, the Aunts using their Seals of Hermes and Uncle Gus using his signet ring.

Aunt Margery blotted the ink on Uncle Gus’ signature, and gathered up the pages. “There were are! All signed, sealed and sanctified!”

“Yes!” Hobby said, in a ‘melodrama hero announcing the triumph of justice’ voice, “It’s taken the better part of a thousand years, but finally, the descendents of Alembic admit the crime of their ancestor against my own ancestor, Thrydwulf!”

Talk about a conversation stopper! “What ARE you talking about, Hobsden?”

“Why This!” He hefted the signed, sealed and sanctified document. “You lot finally admit that your lying, treacherous ancestor, Alembic slandered Thrydwulf, and stole not only his bride, Bredeswege, and this family treasure, King Cole’s Cup, but the recipe to the ale mixture that Alembic named after himself.”

“What ARE you blithering about?” Uncle Gus roared, rattling the rafters and shaking the windowpanes. “We did no such thing!”

“Well then, why did you just sign over ownership of that excellent brewery and this house, not to mention title to all Brewster family properties, businesses, and accounts to me, if not to pay balance for this ancient wrong? And, if I may say so, confirming the betrothal of the lovely Valentine to ease the breach was a genteel touch.”

“You’re Mad!” Aunt Margery snarled, “When are we supposed to have done such a daft thing?”

Hobby rose to empyrean new heights of smirk as he handed the newly sealed document to Aunt Margery. “Why, right here. Signed, sealed, and sanctified, just as you said. Now, it may not hold up in a Civil Court, but it will most decidedly, in the Eternal Courts.”

“We signed no such thing!”

“Oh, Yes you did.” Hobby fondled his Seal of Hermes. “ALL of you did.”

“No we didn’t.” Aunt Margery said, as she leafed through the document. “There is nothing in this document that says so much as ‘Boo’ about Thrydwulf, Bredeswege or Alembic, let alone anything about signing over anything.”

The Hobby’s Seal of Hermes fell out of his hand and fell on the carpet with a thud, right next to the smirk. “WHAT?” Hobby snatched the papers out of her hand and looked through them. “How?” he snarled, “How did you manage…?”

Djiivs flickered into existence next to Hobby. “I believe that I may be able to elucidate this murky situation. Last night, as he was in his room, Mister Hobsden was busily scribing just such a document onto several sheets of vellum. These sheets were so treated that the text would disappear upon drying, but when activated by a minor spell- such as the one that Mister Hobsden muttered as he was sealing that contract- the text would not only re-appear, but replace anything that had been written atop it. You will remember, Mister Hobsden insisted on signing and sealing first. This is so that the document that you signed would have contained the terms that Mister Hobsden just spelled out for you. Once the concealment treatment on these sheets of vellum were dry, Mister Hobsden stealthily made his way down to this library, and placed those sheets atop the vellum stored in this desk, which he was certain would be used for this document.”

“But how did he know that we’d use the vellum in the desk, and not, say the spare sheets in the secretary?” Aunt Margery said, clearly out of her depth for once. Well, I say that it will do her a world of good. It’s done me no end of good, and I’m treading water most of the time.

“If you examine the fireplace, you will notice the remains of a good many sheets of vellum among the ashes. Mister Hobsden destroyed them, as to effect what is called on the stage, a ‘Magician’s Force’. Also, he had a good idea of how many sheets would be needed, from the rough drafts that you provided him.”

“Enough of the Sherlock Holmes blather!” Hobby snarled, his smugness smeared all over his shirtfront, “How did you undo it, you bloody spook?”

“The ashes in the fireplace are not merely of the blank sheets from the secretary. Realizing that justice could only be served by an honest signing of the mutually agreed upon document, I removed the four sheets that you’d prepared, and added them to the fire. You signed the document that Lady Skelding wrote out, as openly agreed to by all parties concerned.”

“Very well, Rupert!” Aunt Dorothy smugly grinned up at Hobby, “Welcome to the family! Well, it won’t be official until we get Judge Merganser to put his seal on it, but as you said, in the eyes of the Eternal Courts, it’s already set. Well, go give your new mother,” she waved in my general direction, “a kiss!”

“What?” Cecelia blurted out, “Mother?” Aunt Dorothy spelled out the real meaning of the agreement that Hobby had signed with the relish of a nanny recalling how the lord of the manor used to drag a stuffed rabbit named ‘Wuggums’ about. “Oh, so THAT’S what you all had up your sleeves! Well, Hobsden, I mean, RUPERT, you heard Aunt Dorothy- give your mother a big kiss!”

“Just as you say.” Hobby said through that smirk which was back somehow. He picked up the signed, sealed and sanctified document. Then he stepped up, grabbed me around the waist, pulled me close and tried to ram his tongue down my throat again.

I pulled away. “Well, THAT was bloody irregular? Do you kiss your real mother that way, Hobby? What do you think you’re up to?”

He leaned over, still with that smirking grin of his, and handed me the document. “I think that you’re going to tear up this farce, and marry me, as we agreed on.”

I took the document, but said, “Hobby, I think that you’re a very naughty boy, and I rather doubt that I have the steady sort of hand that you need, to show you the straight and narrow path. Aunt Margery, is there any chance that Aunt Agatha could come down, and take this young rapscallion in hand?”

Hobby’s smirk dropped again. He pressed forward, rather obviously to give me another choker of a kiss, but Dizzy grabbed him by the collar, and pulled him back. “Naughty, naughty, little boy!” he tutted, “My, you HAVE picked up some nasty habits with those Hobsdens, now haven’t you? Well, not to worry, Aunt Agatha knows how to set naughty boys like you to rights.”

“What is this, Hobsden?” Sir Evelyn, who must have been tired of staying in the background, demanded, “Why would Miss Valentine agree to marry you, just because you gave her a smack on the lips?”

“Because, as Miss Valentine puts it,” Djiivs said serenely, “Master Rupert tries to place as many cards up his sleeves as he possibly can. Two days ago, when Miss Valentine- then Master Algernon- was rowing Miss Cynthia out on the lake, Master Rupert took advantage of the situation to, as the Americans say, ‘slip him a mickey’.”

“But when?” I asked, really not knowing what Djiivs was about. “Hobby couldn’t get at me on the lake, and the only thing that I put between my teeth was the- the bottle- of beer- that I left cooling in the water by the pier- where Hobby could get at it.” The awful realization sunk in like a washbasin dropping on the conk. “You Bounder! You POLLUTED Alembic’s Own Stout! Is there NOTHING sacred to you?”

“Yes,” Djiivs murmured, “I believe that Master Rupert placed potions that, first, made Master Algernon a valid target for the Curse of the Brewsters, in case his ploy with his grimoire went awry. The second potion was, if I deduce correctly, what is known in vulgar parlance, a ‘Love Potion’. As love philters, as Miss Valentine no doubt remembers quite vividly from her experience in Little- Thripping- on- the- Putey, tend to go wrong unless there’s a control mechanism, this draught required three kisses to become active. Master Rupert kissed Miss Valentine twice, but she was kissed a third time by another party, and so this fourth kiss achieved nothing.”

Hobby pulled free of Desmond’s grasp and shot the fit of his suit right. “Well played, Spirit! I don’t know how you got around my Kiss of Rapture, but that’s no great loss.” He whisked the s. s. & s’d document from my hands and ripped it up. “I hereby do renounce and repudiate this contract! I gladly accept the repercussions of doing so! There. Now, all that should happen to me, is that the Curse of the Brewsters- which is rightfully the Curse of the Hobsdens, as are so many of the things that the Brewsters claim as theirs- shall return to me. So, I am back at Start, and I can still inflict the Curse on any other member of the extended Brewster clan as I see fit. A few days wasted, but I still had my fun.” His patented smirk returned for yet another visit. “Though, I must say, Algy, I AM rather looking forward to seeing what you look like in that dress!”

There was a mournful rattling and moaning that shook the house, and then after a moment, there was a muffled explosion and splash. Everyone looked at me in rapt expectation, but nothing happened. I screwed my spare monocle in my eye and said, “Well, Hobby? Do you have to get down on all fours and bark like a dog for this hoodoo to do its job?”

Hobby’s smirk fell of his face for the last time. “What?”

Djiivs did that thing where she tries to clear a throat that she doesn’t really have. “Mister Hobsden, since all of your business here has been settled, I believe that it would be best for all concerned if you left Pelham Court, posthaste.” Djiivs went vaporous, and dived behind one of the bookcases. There was a loud panicked squeaking noise, and Djiivs came back out, holding a very large and particularly nasty looking rat by the tail. Come to think of it, I do recall noting a certain resemblance to Hobby, what with the beady eyes, the nose, the set of the whiskers, and a general sense of a greasy rattiness on the part of both parties. She handed it to Hobby. “Your familiar, Sir.”

“So, THAT’S how he managed to stay two steps ahead of us, all this time!” Joss exploded. “The little beast was hiding in the wainscoting, and ratted us out!”

Sir Evelyn stepped forward, a look of supreme pleasure on his face. “By the way, Hobsden- were you aware that besides the Curse of the Brewsters, that that night, Miss Valentine became the custodian of the Wedgeware Curse as well? And, if I take these matters correctly, since the Curse of the Brewsters didn’t pass over to you… Well, let me just point out that your suit is suddenly quite damp.”

Hobby started to look down at his moist clothing, when the door to the library opened with a bang. “Yes! I KNEW it! I KNEW that I smelled a Wedgeware!” B’flurb’thblupt stood there in the doorway, in all her drippy, duckweed draped splendour. Sir Evelyn goggled in horror of the menace that had haunted his dreams for years, but B’flurb’thblupt shouldered him aside. She prodded Hobby experimentally. “Oh, yes! A bloke, all right! And unless I miss my guess, you’ll give a right lusty rattle, when you drown like a right chap, now won’t you?”

Hobby let out a scream like Dulcey Vavasour did, when she found out that I wasn’t worth ten thousand quid a year, as she’d been lead to believe, as he shot out the door and down the hall with even greater dispatch. B’flurb’thblupt was after him like a shot, but she turned left where he turned right, and went into the loo under the staircase. She dove head-first into the convenience, and there was that moaning and shrieking and shuddering of pipes that we’d heard, as she let herself out via the plumbing.

As we watched this from the library door, Aunt Gwen asked, “Well, what do we do now?”

Cynthia responded, “Well, Mother, right off, I’d say that we get someone in here with a mop, before that water ruins the parquet.”

*****

Uncle Gus and Dizzy muscled Sir Evelyn into the library to iron out that business that they’d been holding off on, while he was still giddy from being free of the curse, the poor chump. We women-folk wandered into the Morning Room for some tea to settle our nerves. “Well, Cyn,” Joss offered, “I hope that after all this, that Sir Evelyn doesn’t start up chasing after you again.”

“He wouldn’t dare.” Aunt Gwen said with a certainty that left frost on the ground.

“And even if he did,” Aunt Margery was back in her old form, “he isn’t in a position where he can offend the Brewsters.”

“Oh? How so” I asked, enjoying my tea in the absolute absence of anything Hobsden.

“Sir Evelyn already knows that the easiest way to get rid of a curse, is to pass it along to someone else. He will soon realize that that your friend Hobsden knows this as well. Furthermore that it will be easier to return the Wedgeware Curse to him, as the bearer of the coronet, than it would be to foist it off on someone who has nothing to do with this all. So, he’s going to want to stay on the right side of the family of sorcerers that beat his bloody curse in the first place, what?”

“Still,” Aunt Dorothy, who sounded as if she were going to call out the hounds on him- as if we hadn’t already- “what chaps me, is how that blaggard Hobsden had the confounded nerve to go spouting all that rubbish about Alembic cheating that dastard Thrydwulf! The confounded NERVE of the man!”

“Actually, Ma’am,” Djiivs paused in her pouring the hot brown essence of tranquility, “Mister Hobsden believed everything that he said.”

“What ARE you talking about?” Aunt Gwen said, horrified, “You don’t mean that tripe about Alembic stealing the recipe for the stout is true, do you?”

“Well, I do happen to have information that hasn’t been coloured by centuries of family gossip.”

“And WHERE do you happen to get this ‘information’, Djiivs?” Aunt Margery said in a voice that suggested that her hand was reaching for the nearest broadsword.

“From the Pelham Court ghost, Sir Leonard, down in the bricked up wine cellar, Ma’am.” Djiivs settled into her storytelling posture, so I knew that I was in for a spell. “And he claims that he got it from the ghost of Swidhelm, the village priest who was so ineffectual in raising the curse upon Eadfrid’s vats. I understand that Swidhelm’s ghost has since moved on, so I’m forced to rely on Sir Leonard’s retelling of the tale. According to Swidhelm, who knew most of what was happening, from Confession, before they fell out, Alembic and Thrydwulf were the best of friends. Such good friends that Alembic sent Thrydwulf to plead his case to Eadfrid, when Alembic wanted Eadfrid’s permission to plead for the fair Bredeswege’s hand. But, when Thrydwulf met Bredeswege, he fell head over heels in love with her. It seems that the phrase ‘the Fair Bredeswege’ was not a mere polite fiction.”

“Yes, Djiivs, we’ve established that great-to-the-whatever-power-grandmother Bredeswege was, by the standards of her day, a bit of all right.”

“I still say that the fact that she was a brewer’s daughter had a bit to do with it.” Cynthia sniped.

“Well, Miss,” Djiivs offered, “it has been said that sitting on a hill of money never hurt a young lady’s chances. At any rate, Thrydwulf fell passionately in love with the fair Bredeswege at first sight, and pursued her without regard for his bosom friend Alemgic’s prior claim.”

“Sounds like Lionel.” Joss quipped, “Maybe we Yardleys are also descended from this Thrydwulf bloke. What a horrible notion!”

Djiivs glossed over Joss’s jape. “Thrydwulf set about to impress Eadfrid, who hadn’t much in the way of use for magicians in general, as is implied by the fact that Alembic had to send a proxy to argue his case. He tried to cast an enchantment upon Eadfrid’s vats, which would have improved the quality of the yield. However something went wrong, and the result was the near polar opposite of what was desired.”

“Hah!” Aunt Dorothy chortled, “And Alembic nowhere near the scene. I knew all that guff about Alembic sabotaging Thrydwulf was bunkum!”

“Actually, Thrydwulf had been sabotaged. But not by Alembic. His enchantments had been altered by the young lady Bredeswege.”

“Bredeswege!”

“Yes, Swidhelm was very clear on this. It seems that she confessed to him directly on this point. It seems that Alembic was not the sort to worship the fair Bredeswege from afar. Far from it, it seems that they had been very close for some time. So close that Bredeswege felt that a marriage to Alembic as soon as possible most advisable. And she had no intention of pledging her troth to Thrydwulf, no matter how keen he was on it.”

“There’s my girl!” I piped in.

“When he smelled the reek that was coming from his vats, Eadfrid sent Thrydwulf off with a tick in his ear, and sent for Father Swidhelm. Father Swidhelm, who was aware of Bredeswege’s plight, begged off and encouraged Eadfrid to swallow his pride and send for Alembic as the only man who could save the brewery.”

“Which of course, he did. But what about that big magical duel that takes up so much of the tale?”

“Well, my understanding is, that there was a bit of a row between Thrydwulf and Alembic, but it was nothing out of the ordinary for a spat over the same girl. But there was nothing violent, or supernatural about it. The only curses thrown were the verbal sort. One supposes that later generations felt a need to add a touch of drama to the narrative, as the Hobsdens did, when they came up with the story about Thrydwulf devising the recipe for the Stout. Indeed, the reason that Bredeswege was able to sabotage him so effectively was that he knew almost nothing about brewing. Still, the tale was told and re-told so many times over the centuries, that both families came to believe their versions implicitly.”

“Good Lord, Djiivs!” I gasped, shaken to the foundations. “Are you telling me that Hobby actually believed that he had Justice on his side? That he was just getting back what he felt that his family had been cheated out of, centuries ago?”

“Oh, hardly, Miss. No, as you’ve often said, Rupert Hobsden is a thoroughgoing rotter. However, he eagerly welcomed the excuse to take advantage of you and your family. There is nothing so dear to a scoundrel’s heart as the appearance- but not practice- of righteousness.”

“And speaking of scoundrels,” Joss leaned over at me eagerly, “Grassy lit out of here like a fox with his brush on fire. Now, normally, once Lionel sets his sights on a girl, he only shows his heels once he’s had his wicked way with them. So, Valentine, exactly who gave you that magic third kiss, that foiled Hobby’s scheme?”

“Valentine!” Aunt Margery shrilled, “You didn’t!”

“Well, Mrs. Brinkley, as Miss Yardley just pointed out, Mister Yardley did manage to kiss Miss Valentine for the magic third time. As a result, Miss Valentine was subjected to a lesser effect of Mister Hobsden’s *ahem!* ‘Kiss of Rapture’. Even if she were expecting it- and how could she?- it would take a will of iron, such as your own, to have resisted it. And, all said, it was for the best; if Miss Valentine were still a virgin, then the Brewster Curse would have been removed, and returned to Mr. Hobsden when he repudiated that contract, instead of the Wedgeware Curse.”

Aunt Margery was mollified, but not satisfied with that, and seemed to be nursing some sort of grudge.

“And speaking of Grassy, Joss, when will he be back?”

Joss muffled a snort at me. “What? Weren’t you listening? He’s over the hill and far away by now. He’s probably in Dover, mooning over some female ferry counter clerk.”

“You mean … there won’t be a … well… second round?” I asked, trying to keep the choke out of my voice.”

“Well, not unless you find some other hound to take Grassy’s place.” Joss took a deep drag of her fag and let out a long luxuriant plume of smoke.

“You mean that you can DO that?” I asked, whole new vistas of social activity suddenly opening up to me. Why, if half the blokes around the Plover’s Club were half the rogues that they claimed they were…

“Don’t be a ninny!” Joss said, with the matinee femme fatale’s scorn in her voice. “Of course you can, if you have the stomach for it!”

“But… all the girls that I’ve swained about, always said that if I even so much as kissed them, that I was obliged to make honest women of them!”

“Aaahhh… weeelll…” Joss seemed to be gored on the horns of something, but then she suddenly brightened. “Why, VALENTINE! I always knew that you were a goose, but I never realized that you were an INNOCENT!”

“MISS YARDLEY!” Aunt Margery snapped, a Brewster Aunt to the core, “Valentine, I warn you, if you purse this disgraceful venture, we will cut you off your allowance, and leave you without so much as a farthing! We are the trustees of your parents’ estate, and until you are married, we will control your finances in such a way as to keep disgrace from the Brewster name!”

“Well, that’s not really such a big threat.” Cynthia joined in calmly. “I mean, the legacy that Valentine’s going to get from Aunt Ernestine should be worth at least fifteen thousand a year, and that’s not including the worth of Wood House, her place in Hampshire, or her London house.”

“What are you talking about, Cynthia?” I asked, half enthralled at no longer having to grovel at the Aunt’s feet for the Readies, and half terrified of having to live in that horror-choked mausoleum of Ernestine’s on Grosvenor Square.

“Didn’t they tell you, Valentine? Why Dizzy told me about it, as soon as his voice went back up to a soprano! It seems-”

Aunt Margery hissed her with the venom of an entire brigade of cobras, but Aunt Gwen took the ball from Cynthia. And well, even Aunt Agatha wouldn’t shush Aunt Gwen in her own morning room. “You see, Valentine, it is understood that the person who has the curse is the custodian of the curse. That is, we have to make sure that the person who’s already got it doesn’t go about committing suicide, or the men-folk of the family would die off in droves. So, traditionally, a provision was made for the custodian, so that the poor dear would be comfortable, in case she never got up the nerve to take a husband.”

“You mean, some of these bally ‘custodians’ went and got married? Whom to?”

The lady of the house chortled, “Valentine, all of the custodians of the curse have been gorgeous women with substantial incomes! Even with their off-history, it’s always been more an issue of whether they wanted to get married, than if they could!”

“However,” Aunt Margery said with the gravitas of a hanging judge, “you are sore mistaken, if you think that we’re just going to sign that legacy over to you, Valentine. No, given your lack of seriousness and responsibility, I’m afraid that the Custodian’s Legacy shall have to remain under the control of capable hands. We’ll discuss your new allowance and sign a few papers when we get back down to London, Valentine-”

Djiivs did that thing where she makes fictitious throat-clearing noises. “Actually, Mrs. Brinkley, that shouldn’t be necessary.”

“What ARE you talking about, Djiivs?”

“Well, as you pointed out, your late Aunt Ernestine was in the point of traveling to remote and dangerous far off locations, and partaking of endeavors that might be described at the very least as perilous. The only logical inference that can be drawn is that the Custodian Legacy is not under the control of any member of the Brewster family, other than the Custodian herself. Otherwise, you most certainly would have prevented Miss Ernestine from endangering herself by the simple expedient of withdrawing funding.” Both of the aunts rose up, and appeared to be reaching for seals to issue some particularly mind-boggling anathema or another. A sane entity would have fled into the outer reaches, screaming, but Djiivs stood her ground. “Of course, if you contrive to withhold the Legacy funding in some way, Miss Valentine will of course be forced to marry, freeing up the monies of her trust fund, thus requiring a strict audit of those funds.”

Aunt Margery wilted, and Dorothy sniffed, “So crass, talking about mere money in this way! No, all that we are really worried about is Valentine easing gracefully into her new role as Custodian of the Brewster Curse. As a matter of fact, I was thinking that I might put Valentine up for one of my clubs.”

“If it’s all the same to you Aunt Dorothy, old darling, I’d be happier if Joss let me know where she shops.”

*****

Since it was impossible for me to return to my digs at Long Street, let alone draw on my readies, I was forced to remain at Pelham Court until everything was signed, sealed and had a Pater Noster said over it. What with depositions, examinations and swearings, it took the better part of a month. And since the Chancellery is very touchy about gross material transformations, a lot of this involved medical examinations by doctors who seemed to squeeze and prod a bit more than was strictly called for. Still, there was this one rather spry medical johnny named Hume, who insisted that I call him ‘Spanner’. He was over at Pelham Court rather often for consultations and examinations and… whatnot…

With all of that, it was a month before I was stepping around my old stomping grounds in high heels. I had just come from my bank, where the staff was surprisingly more helpful than they’d ever been before. I had all my documentation that would allow me to access my Readies, which were now bursting with fiscal vigor. That last little bit of business taken care of, I heard the plaintive voice of a scotch and water calling my name. Knowing that this rescue could be effected just around the corner, I headed for the Plover Club.

However, the concierge at the Plover Club, who I’ve known forever, even if I can’t recall his name at the moment, blocked me, saying that women weren’t allowed. When I informed him that not only had I been inside those hallowed halls, but I’d been a member for years, he sent forthwith for the Club Secretary. “Why, hello, Ploogie!” I greeted the Webbly-Smythe.

Ploogie balked, as if trying to remember which resort we’d met, and if he’d made silly promises. “Excuse me, Miss, but do we know each other?”

“Why, only since we all did a night on the shire one boat night, for nicking that officer’s helmet.” Ploogie either had too much experience with gorgeous blondes helping him nick officer’s helmets, or none at all, and he wasn’t connecting. The latter is more likely, though the former casts him in a far more interesting light. “I’m Valentine Algernon Brewster.”

“Oh? Any relation to Algy Brewster? He’s a member here, and he never said anything about having a relation that-"

I cut him off in mid-blither. “I AM Algy Brewster.” I handed him the same sealed and certified proofs that I just used at the bank. “And, if you need an eye-witness, why there’s Grassy Yardley! He can vouch for me! Grassy! Yoo-hoo, Grassy!”

Grassy, who had been trying to hide behind what may very well be the largest aspidistra in the world, blanched at lit out the front door, not bothering to collect his hat and coat. “Oh, Bother!”

Ploogie had been giving the proofs the old eagle-eye. “You mean… you’re Algy Brewster?”

“Yes, that is the general drift of what I’ve been trying to say. Now that we have that settled, let me at the bar, I’m perishing from want of liquid fortification.”

“Well, Algy-”

“Valentine.”

“Valentine, this may very well be, but I’m afraid that I can’t let you in.”

“Why not? My subscription is paid up to Saint Swithin’s Day!”

“Valentine, this is a GENTLEMAN’S Club! We don’t allow ladies to join!”

“And a bally good thing too, or they’d simply ruin the place. But, Ploogie, I’m already a member.”

“And that may very well be, but I’m afraid that I’m going to have to bar you from the club, for obvious reasons.”

“Obvious reasons?”

“Now, don’t you worry, I’ll speak with the membership committee about refunding your subscription.”

“Are you sure that you can afford it? As I recall, you’re always asking for the odd donation, implying that the place is on the verge of bankruptcy or some such.”

“Well, we’ve had a good run on the membership recently, and I’m sure that we can afford the reimbursement.”

My world began to crack and teeter on its very foundations. Barred from the Plover Club! I’ll never live it down! They’ll never let me join any other clubs, after this! In a catastrophe of such epic dimensions, there was only one thing to do- “DJIIVS!”

The trusted retainer appeared, and I explained the disaster at hand. She, of course, knew exactly what to do. “Very well, Miss. I’ll go to the kitchen, and tell Gustav to pack his knives and pans.”

“Excuse me?” Ploogie reacted as if I’d told Djiivs to do something horrible, like set fire to the club, or water the whiskey.”

“Well, Mister Webbly-Smythe, you are aware than M’seiur Dubrec’s employment at this club is through the agency of repaying his debt to Miss Brewster. Gustav is, in effect, working for Miss Brewster, and she is letting his services out to the club. This is dependent upon Miss Brewster’s membership here. Since Miss Brewster must leave, she will be taking Gustav with her.”

Ploogie was faced with a fate worse than a demolished club or watered Glenfiddich- a packed dinner table full of members expecting Gustav’s fare, and getting the product of whoever they have peeling potatoes. “Well! Well, now that you mention it, the only rule that we actually HAVE regarding the membership is that ladies cannot become members. There’s nothing that I know of in the rules that insists that we bar existing members who manage to become women. And, now that I think of it, it really IS a rum trick to pull on a chap, after all that he’s been through, what? Valentine, why don’t you find a seat, while I round up the membership committee, and make your confirmation official?”

Djiivs was full of ideas, as per usual. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you make arrangements for a room with a private bath for Miss Valentine? After all, you can’t afford to let the club get a reputation for letting a young lady change clothes in just any room, now can you?”

Ploogie tottered off, and I went to find a comfortable chair. There was an odd silence, as the membership and I regarded each other. They regarded me, and I regarded them, and there was a new light in both regards. Djiivs materialized with the much desired whiskey, and I whispered, “Dashed good wheeze, Djiivs, but what happens when Gustav pays off his bloody debt?”

“Well, my sources tell me that Gustav has been spending his nights at the Python club, so maintaining this status quo shouldn’t be terribly difficult. And, more to the point, once the membership gets used to you and your winning ways, they would most likely rise up in revolt, should the Committee try to eject you again.”

“Quite Right, Djiivs!” I took a deep drink and found it good. “Djiivs, I’ve said it before, but it bears repetition- you are a treasure beyond rubies.”

“Very Good, Miss.”

since 1/20/06