For a moment Webley’s eyes searched frantically around the room. Finally they landed on the book, which lay now on the table, and immediately the glance of uncertainty was replaced with a look of triumph. “All right,” he said. “All right. You think you’ve got me, don’t you? Think you’ve trapped me into a bad contract. The only thing you’ve neglected is that I can write a better book than this one.” He picked up the book, flipping through it again, “Look at this. More than two hundred pages of Shakespeare analysis—not to mention the rest, from The Pearl Poet to Oscar Wilde—and not one genuine, scholarly idea in the lot. Well written, possibly. But any graduate student knows that Shakespeare didn’t model Cleopatra on his mother—the idea’s absurd. And an idiot would know that the textual problem is the only clue to Hamlet.”

“But…” Robert said.

“But nothing!” Webley slammed the book back on his desk. “It’s not merely your insidious way of trying to steal my soul that infuriates me—it’s this fool book you’re trying to do it with. Who in Hell ever gave you these stupid notions about literature?”

Robert seemed uneasy. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Mr. Webley,” he said. “It was a great many people in Hell. You see, I didn’t exactly write the book myself, sir.”

“Then who… who wrote this nonsense about Shakespeare?”

“Shakespeare, sir. I sobered him up and….”

Abruptly, Webley’s voice took on the tone of a small man speaking from the bottom of a well. “And Milton. Who…?”

The demon managed a weak smile. “John had some revealing things to say about Comus, didn’t he, sir?”

Webley’s eyes were taking on a strange, hunted look. “And Beowulf… Surely you didn’t…”

“I’m afraid I did, Mr. Webley. We have the author of that one too—he slipped up once on the Fourth Commandment. Fellow named Seothang the Imbiber. Drinks mead.”

Webley stood in stony silence for several minutes, holding the heavy book in a limp hand. His eyes were closed.

After a few minutes he opened them. Robert had, tastefully, vanished. In his place was a small, black table. On this were arranged neatly a typewriter, a stack of white paper, and a calendar.

13. Far From Home

FAR FROM HOME