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CHAPTER 3

he last reverberations of sound hung in the air and jangled in Chris's head. Of the many times he had examined Mr. Wicker's window and pored over the rope, the ship and the Nubian boy, he had never gone into Mr. Wicker's shop. So now, alone until someone should answer the bell, he looked eagerly, if uneasily, around him.

What with the one window and the lowering day outside, the long narrow shop was somber. The ceiling seemed close above Chris's head. Heavy hand-hewn beams crossed it from one side to the other. A few dusty pieces of furniture stood about, whether for sale or for use Chris could not determine, and almost lost in the black shadows at the far end were what appeared to be boxes and bales, piled one upon the other.

The growing silence, now the bell had stopped, gripped Chris. A chill made itself felt in his feet and spread rapidly over his body so that he gave a convulsive shiver. He was about to turn and go out when, at the farthest end of the gloomy shop, a small primrose oblong of light seeped for a little way along the floor and a door opened. Fascinated, Chris stared, as into this distant pallor stepped the short and remarkably spidery figure of a man. Mr. Wicker's back being toward the source of light, Chris could not see his face. The figure paused, with a fragile hand scarcely bigger than that of a child's on the doorhandle, and then came forward.

The silence, Chris noticed, was still unbroken as Mr. Wicker advanced toward him, and Chris shuddered again as he stood waiting and watching, but whether it was with cold or with fear—and the room was indeed very dank and unaired—it would have been hard to say.

When Mr. Wicker had come within a few feet of Chris, the final vestiges of daylight from outside reached the extraordinary man facing the boy, and for the first time Chris was able to examine the old man who was more legend than fact throughout Georgetown.

William Wicker's face in itself was not forbidding. What made an icy mouse seem to run the length of Chris's spine was the impression of enormous age in the appearance of the man confronting him. The thin lips crackled the withered and multi-wrinkled cheeks in the ghost of what had once been a smile. The nose, once hawk-like and proud and denoting strength of character and purpose, was now pinched by the ever-tightening fingers of a progression of years. The double fans of minute wrinkles breaking from eye corner to temple and joining with those over the cheekbones were drawn into the horizontal lines across the domed forehead. Little tufts of white fuzz above the ears were all that remained of the antiquarian's hair, but what drew and held Chris's gaze were the old man's eyes.

Mr. Wicker's eyes were not those of an old man at all. They had the vigor of a man in the prime of life, and their presence in that puckered face of age which confronted Chris was horribly disconcerting. Chris blinked and looked again. Yes, they were still there. Eyes so deeply brown they might well have been black, but clear, sparkling, and with a decided glint of humor and mischief. While the boy had been too frightened to move at the sight of Mr. Wicker's ancient cheeks, pinched nose, and hairless head, he was encouraged by the friendly eyes. Chris could not help but like those eyes, even though it was hard to believe they belonged to the man before him.

As though from a great distance Mr. Wicker's voice came to his ears, and this too, Chris found difficult to credit. There, not four feet in front of him was the old shopkeeper, and yet the high thin voice might have come from anywhere else—the rafters, the room beyond the lighted door; anywhere.

"Well, my boy? You wanted something?"

Chris swallowed and his voice came back to him. "Yes sir," he said. "I saw your sign, and I know a boy who needs the job." He looked at Mr. Wicker as though he were unable to look elsewhere. "He's a schoolmate of mine. Jakey Harris, his name is, and he really needs the job. I wondered—" Mr. Wicker's eyes, laughing at him just a little, confused Chris and he began to stammer.

"I—I just wondered if the place was still open."

Mr. Wicker studied Chris for a moment or two before he replied. What he saw was a fresh-cheeked lad tall for thirteen, sturdy, with sincerity and good humor in his face, and something sensitive and appealing about his eyes. His chin showed obstinacy and tenacity; his nose would shape itself well as he grew older. Unruly tawny hair was blown and ruffled in every direction and his hands, even young as he was, showed ability and strength.

"Hm-mm," said Mr. Wicker, and his remote smile broadened while his eyes sparkled with the warmth of a fire on a winter's night. "Hm-mm. Yes. The job is still open, young man, but while you're here, why not apply for it yourself?"

Chris, somewhat less ill at ease, now he had got his message out, shifted his feet and gave a short laugh.

"Oh no, thank you, sir. You see, I don't really need it, and Jakey does. It wouldn't be fair for me to take it if Jakey has a chance."

He looked away, and saw that the light from the distant hidden room was jumping and flickering on the shadowed walls. He guessed there must be a lively fire in that room beyond.

"Of course," Chris added anxiously, "I don't know what the job is. You don't say, on the sign, and Jakey isn't awfully well. He has a twisted foot and it makes him slow in walking. Would that interfere with Jakey's getting the job, sir?" Chris enquired.

The reply was slow in coming, and Chris heard as if the words had been spoken, not before him, where the black outlined figure still stood, but as if at his very ear. Soft but clear, the words sounded.

"It would not interfere, Christopher my boy. But now that you are here, you must make the test. Jakey will be cared for, never fear."

Almost as in a dream, Chris felt an atmosphere drenching him as though a powerful scent filled the air. His head swam a little, and he realized that it was a long time since he had had lunch. He thought he detected a pleasant smell of herbs, like the potpourri his mother had in bowls in their house. The sharp black outline of Mr. Wicker impressed itself on his eyeballs, and in the room, now totally dark except for the light that streamed from the faraway open door, Mr. Wicker's body seemed to radiate a bright edge, like a carbon paper held up to the sun. The voice at his ear once more filled his head and his hearing.

"You will make the test, my boy. Now. Just turn around, and tell me what you see out my window."

Chris, in spite of the strangeness rising about him like a mist, remembered very well what lay outside the window. But even as he slowly turned, the thought pierced his mind, Why had he not seen the reflection of the headlights of the cars moving up around the corner of Water Street and up the hill toward the traffic signals? And why had the sound of wheels, of gears and of horns, been so completely muffled out? The room seemed overly still.

Then, in that second, he turned and faced about. The wide bow window was there before