Marvin answered the man with his usual unfailing politness, glancing at his ankle watch and announcing the time as just five past the hour.
'Thank you, sir, you are most obliging,' the man said. 'Five past already? Time devours our feeble mortality, leaving us with but the sour residue of memory.'
Marvin nodded. 'Yet this ineffable and ungraspable quantity,' he replied, 'this time which no man may possess, is in truth our only possession.'
The man nodded as though Marvin had said something profound, instead of merely voicing a well-mannered conversational commonplace. The stranger bent forward into a sweeping bow (more to be seen in a bygone day than in this plebian age of ours). In so doing he lost his balance and would have fallen had not Marvin grasped him strongly and set him upon his feet.
'Many thanks, ' the man said, never for a moment losing his poise. 'Your grasp of time and of men is most sure; this shall not be forgotten.'
And with that he whirled and marched away into the crowd.
Marvin watched him go, faintly perplexed. Something about the fellow had not rung true. Perhaps it was the moustache, patently false, or the thickly pencilled eyebrows, or the artificial wart on the left cheek; or perhaps it was the shoes, which had given an extra three inches to the man's height, or the cloak, which had been padded to augment the natural narrowness of the shoulders. Whatever it was, Marvin found himself bemused, but not immediately distrustful, for beneath the man's rodomontade there had been evidence of a cheerful and sturdy spirit not lightly to be discounted.
It was while thinking of these things that Marvin happened, by chance, to glance down at his right hand. Looking more closely, he saw a piece of paper in the palm. It certainly had not come there by natural means. He realized that the cloaked stranger must have pressed it upon him while stumbling (or, as Marvin realized now, while pretending to stumble).
This cast the events of the past few minutes into an entirely different light. Frowning slightly, Marvin unfolded the paper and read:
If the sir would care to hear something of interest and advantage both to himself and to the universe, the importance of which both in the immediate present and in the far-flung future cannot be stressed too greatly, and which cannot be expatiated upon in this note in any detail for obvious and all-too-sufficient reasons, but which shall be revealed in due course assuming a commonality of interests and of ethical considerations, then let the sir proceed at the ninth hour to the Inn of the Hanged Man, and there let him take table in the far left-hand corner near the paired embrochures, and let him wear a white rosebud in his lapel and carry in his right hand a copy of the Diario de Celsus (4-star edition), and let him tap upon the table with the little finger of his right hand, in no particular rhythm.
These instructions being followed, One will come to you and make you acquainted with that which we believe you would like to hear.
[signed] One Who Wishes You Well.
Marvin mused for a considerable time upon that note and its implications. He sensed that in some unimaginable fashion a group of interrelated lives and problems, hitherto unknown to him, had crossed his path.
But now was the moment when he could choose. Did he really care to involve himself in anyone's scheme, no matter how noteworthy? Might it not be best to avoid involvement and pursue his own solitary way through the metaphoric deformations of the world?
Perhaps … yet still, the incident had intrigued him and offered an apparently inconsequential diversion to help him forget the pain of Cathy's loss. (Thus action serves as anodyne, whereas contemplation is revealed as the most direct form of involvement, and therefore much shunned by men.)
Marvin followed the instructions given to him in the note from the mysterious stranger. He bought a copy of the Diaro de Celsus (4-star edition), and procured a white rosebud for his lapel. And at nine o'clock sharp he went to the Inn of the Hanged Man and sat down at the table in the far left-hand corner, near the paired embrochures. His heart was beating with some rapidity. It was not an entirely unpleasant sensation.
The Inn of the Hanged Man was a low yet cheerful place, and its clientele was composed, for the most part, of hearty specimens of the lower classes. Husky fish peddlers bawled for drink, and inflamed agitators howled abuse at the govemment and were hooted down by the heavy-thewed blacksmiths. A six-legged thorasorous was roasting in the great fireplace, and a scully basted the crackling carcass with honeyed juices. A fiddler had got up on a table and was playing a jig; his wooden leg rattled merrily in time with the old refrain. A drunken strumpet, with jewelled eyelids and artificial septum, wept in a corner with maudlin self-pity.
A perfumed dandy swept a lace handkerchief to his nose and threw a disdainful coin to the tightrope wrestlers. Farther to the left, at the common table, a bootblack reached into the pot for a morsel of scrag, and found his hand skewered to the table by the poniard of a riisman. This exploit was greeted with cheers by the assembled company.
'Gawd save'ee, sir, and whut'll thee be drinking?'
Marvin looked up and saw a waitress with red cheeks and extensive bosom waiting for his order.
'Mead, and it so please you,' Marvin answered quietly.
'Aye, that we do be havin',' the girl replied. She bent to adjust her garter and whispered to Marvin, 'Lawks, sir, do be mindful of yourself in this place which is in truth no fitten for a young gentleman such as thyself.'
'Thanks for your warning,' Marvin replied, 'but if it comes to the rub, I hope that I may be allowed to believe that I might not be entirely unavailing.'
'Ah, ye don't know them as is 'ere,' the girl replied; and then moved away hastily, for a large gentleman dressed entirely in black had approached Marvin's table.
'Now by the sweet bleeding wounds of the Almighty and what have we here?' he shouted.
A silence fell over the inn. Marvin looked steadily upon the man, and recognized in his huge expanse of chest and abnormal reach that one whom people called 'Black Denis'. And he remembered the man's reputation as a ripper and tearer and general bully and spoiler.
Marvin affected not to notice the man's sweaty proximity. Instead, he took out a fan and wafted it gently in front of his nose.
The crowd roared with peasant mirth. Black Denis took a half-step closer. Muscles along his arm writhed like cobras in travail as his fingers closed on the gaunt handle of his rapier.
'Damn me blind for a turnip-filler!' Black Denis shouted, 'but it seems most marvellous to me that we have here in our midst a fellow who looks most exceedingly like a king's spy!
Marvin suspected that the man was trying to provoke him. Therefore he ignored the sally and buffed his fingernails with a tiny silver file.
'Well, slash me up the middle and tie me guts for a sash!' Black Denis swore. 'It seems that some so-called gentlemun ain't no gentlemun at all since they don't acknowledge when another gentlemun is speaking at um. But maybe um's deaf, which I shall find out by examining the fellow's left ear – at home, at my leisure.'
'Were you addressing me?' Marvin asked, in a suspiciously mild voice.
'Indeed I was,' Black Denis said. 'For it came to me of a sudden that me likes not your face.'
'Indeed?' Marvin lisped.
'Aye!' thundered Black Denis. 'Nor like I more your manner, nor the stench of your perfume, nor the shape of your foot nor the curve of your arm.'
Marvin's glance narrowed. The moment was filled with murderous tension, and no sound could be heard save Black Denis' stertorous breathing. Then, before Marvin could reply, a man had run to Black Denis' side. It was a little hunchback who thus rashly interfered, a sallow man with a great white beard, standing no more than three feet high and dragging a club foot behind him.
'Ah, come now,' the hunchback said to Black Denis. 'Wilt shed blood on St Origen's Eve, and it unworthy of your lordship's attention? For shame, Black Denis!'
'I'll shed blood an I so please, by the cankers of the holy red mountain!' swore the bully.
'Aye, spill his guts for him!' shouted a spindly, long-nosed fellow from the crowd, blinking with one blue eye and squinting with one brown.
'Aye, spill it!' a dozen other voices roared, taking up the cry.
'Gentlemen, please!' said the fat innkeeper, wringing his hands.
' 'E ain't never bothered you!' said the frowsy barmaid, a tray of glasses trembling in her hand.
'Nay, leave the popinjay to his drink,' said the hunchback, tugging at Black Denis' sleeve and drooling from one side of his mouth.
'Unhand me, lump-shoulder!' Black Denis shouted, and struck out with a right hand the size of a padding mauler. It caught the little hunchback fair across the chest and propelled him across the room, driving him comple across the aleyard table until he fetched up against the cinch rack with a great clatter of broken glass.
'Now, by the maggots of eternity!' the huge brawler said, turning to Marvin.
Still Marvin fanned himself and sat back in his chair, relaxed but with eyes slightly narrowed. A more observant man might have noticed the faint anticipatory tremor along his thighs, the merest suggestion of flexion in his wrist.
Now he deigned to notice his molester. 'Still here?' he queried. 'Fellow, your importunities grow wearisome to the ear and redundant to the senses.'
'Yeah?' Black Denis cried.
'Yeah,' Marvin replied ironically. 'Reiteration is ever the emphasis of the disingenuous; yet it amuses not my fancy. Therefore remove yourself, fellow, and take your overheated carcass somewhere else, lest I cool it for thee by a bloodletting which any chirurgeon might envy.'