“Fifteen,” he said. “That’s it. I can’t go any higher than sixteen. Seventeen’s my last and final offer. Absolutely. Eighteen it is.”

Angry reached for the pen. Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley grabbed it before he could get to it.

“Nineteen!” he said. “We need elves!”

“Give me the pen,” said Angry. “Please.”

Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley burst into tears and buried his face in his hands.

“All right then, twenty,” he said, in a muffled voice. “Twenty-one pounds an hour, but you’ll be making more than I am.”

The dwarfs eventually managed to sign for twenty-five, but it was a struggle, and two of them had to hold on to Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley’s arms while the others wrestled the pen from him. They left him in his office, and closed the door behind them. From inside came the sound of “Jingle Bells” in a foreign language, followed almost immediately by an intense burst of hammering.

Nobody came to show Dan and the dwarfs out of the store. They had to find their own way back to the street, and they were so troubled by their encounter with Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley that only later did they notice that, throughout the course of their meeting with him, he had not blinked once.

• • •

Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley sat back in his chair. He was very relieved that the dwarfs were gone.

“I think that went well,” he said to the Voice in the Wall. “I don’t believe they suspected a thing. I acted entirely normal.”

Twenty-five pounds an hour, said the Voice in the Wall. Do you think I’m made of money?

Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley shook his head. Whatever the Voice in the Wall was made of, it wasn’t money. Money didn’t smell that foul.

“They were tough little negotiators,” said Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley. “Very tough indeed. They wore me down.”

They won’t live long enough to collect a penny of it, said the Voice in the Wall. Still, it’s the principle.

“I’ll be more careful next time,” said Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley.

That’s nice, said the Voice in the Wall, and Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley, who couldn’t remember his past, failed to hear in its tones the sound of his very short future coming to an unhappy end.

XII

In Which Invitations Are Received

THE INVITATIONS BEGAN TO arrive in the days before the grand opening of Wreckit & Sons. Samuel received one, with a special note informing him that, as the hero who had saved Biddlecombe and the Earth from a demonic invasion, he would be a guest of honor. He was also warmly requested to bring the courageous Boswell along with him. The note was signed by Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley on behalf of the new owner, a mysterious Mr. Grimly.

“That’s very nice of him, isn’t it?” said Samuel’s mother as she examined the note. “And look at that invitation! It’s printed on ever such expensive card, and the handwriting is so lovely. It’s odd that it’s written in red ink, though, isn’t it? You’d think they’d have used black, or blue. Maybe they thought it was more festive in red.”