“And of course our friend knows what is coming next in his own story,” said Lind.

“Are we to take it then that there was some striking reversal of fortune awaiting him when he went to England?” said Ingestree.

“I know no more than you,” said I. “I do not hear Merlin’s Laugh very often, though I think I am more sensitive to its sound than most people. But he spoke of finding out what wine would be poured into the well-smoked bottled that he had become. I don’t know what it was.”

Ingestree was more excited than the rest. “But are we never to know? How can we find out?”

“Surely that’s up to you,” said Lind. “Aren’t you going to ask Eisengrim to come to London to see the rushes of this film we have been making? Isn’t that owing to him? Get him in London and ask him to continue.”

Ingestree looked doubtful. “Can it be squeezed out of the budget?” he said. “The corporation doesn’t like frivolous expenses. Of course I’d love to ask him, but if we run very much over budget, well, it would be as good as my place is worth, as servants used to say in the day when they knew they were servants.”

“Nonsense, you can rig it,” said Kinghovn. But Ingestree still looked like a worried, rather withered baby.

“I know what is worrying Roly,” said Liesl. “He thinks that he could squeeze Eisengrim’s expenses in London out of the B.B.C., but he knows he can’t lug in Ramsay and me, and he’s too nice a fellow to suggest that Magnus travel without us. Isn’t that it, Roly?”

Ingestree looked at her. “Bang on the head,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Liesl. “I’ll pay my own way, and even this grinding old miser Ramsay might unchain a few pennies for himself. Just let us know when to come.”

And so, at last, they went. As we came back into the large, gloomy, nineteenth-century Gothic hall of Sorgenfrei, I said to Liesl: “It was nice of you to think of Lebbaeus, tonight. People don’t mention him very often. But you’re wrong, you know, saying that there is no record of what he did after the Crucifixion. There is a non-canonical Acts of Thaddaeus—Thaddaeus was his surname, you recall—that tells all about him. It didn’t get into the Bible, but it exists.”

“What’s it like?”

“A great tale of marvels. Real Arabian Nights stuff. Puts him dead at the centre of affairs.”

“Didn’t I say so! Just like a man. I’ll bet he wrote it himself.”

2

Merlin’s Laugh

(1)

Because of Jurgen Lind’s slow methods of work, it took longer to get Un Hommage à Robert-Houdin into a final form than we had expected, and it was nearly three months later when Eisengrim, Liesl, and I journeyed to London to see what it looked like. The polite invitation suggested that criticism would be welcome. Eisengrim was the star, and Liesl had put up a good deal of the money for the venture, expecting to get it back over the next two or three years, with substantial gains, but I think we all knew that criticism of Lind would not be gratefully received. A decent pretence was to be kept up, all the same.