Free Quests of Simon Ark by Edward D. Hoch

foreigners at the Blue Pig, sir. My name is George Kerrigan. I’m the owner of this here place.”
    “Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Kerrigan. I’m Simon Ark, and these are my friends. We’ve been told that the rear of this building dates back to the seventeenth century, and we’re very anxious to examine it further.”
    “Glad to be of service,” Kerrigan smiled at us. “Yes, sir, this here’s just about the only old building like it still standing. You know, there was that God-awful fire back in 1666, and it just about burned down the whole damned town.” He spoke as if he’d witnessed it personally, with just the right degree of awe.
    “We understand,” Simon Ark continued, “that you even have a room where Catholic priests hid during the persecutions.”
    “That we have, sir—or at least them’s the stories what goes with the old place. Come on back this way and I’ll show you.”
    We followed him down a musty corridor which led into the rear of the pub. Here, in a house that was obviously much older than the front, he paused to unlock a door and throw it open before us. “Haven’t been in here myself in a good many months,” he told us. “Wait a minute while I get some candles.”
    “No electricity?” Rain asked, somewhat startled.
    “Not in this room, miss; we never use it, so we never bothered to wire it.”
    He returned in a moment with a multi-branched candlestick held high, and led us into the room. It was no more, really, than an enclosed space some twenty feet square, without windows, and with only the one door through which we’d entered. An ancient, musty smell hung over the place, suggesting that even the air we were now breathing might have been several hundred years old. The walls were covered with a fantastic blaze of colored wallpaper, which even now was just beginning to fade. The only bit of furniture in the room was a huge old carved table, some ten feet long, which stood against the opposite wall. Its top had been covered with newspapers, apparently to preserve the finish.
    Kerrigan was busy telling us the history of the room, from its priesthole days through the reigns of various kings and queens, but I noticed that Simon Ark was far more concerned with the ancient table. He brushed aside the dusty newspapers, which I noticed were some four weeks old, and smiled slightly when he came upon a shallow drawer in the table’s side. But the smile faded when he found the drawer empty.
    I, meanwhile, had strolled over to one of the walls and was trying to decipher some patterns from the faded rainbows of color. But the paper seemed to be designed without any purpose, a weird reminder of seventeenth-century England.
    Simon Ark was on his knees, examining the bottom of the long table now; but if Kerrigan thought this odd, he made no comment. He had trapped Rain in a corner and was continuing his brief history of England. “You know, miss, George III himself once visited this very pub, near the end of his reign. Of course there are those who say he was crazy at the time, but he was certainly a friendly one. My great-grandfather used to tell me about those days when I was very small…”
    “Pardon me,” Simon Ark interrupted, resuming an upright position. “But if this room was once a hiding place for priests, I’m sure it has more than one exit. Suppose you show us the secret way out.”
    Kerrigan never blinked an eye, but simply led us to one of the room’s corners as if he’d intended to show it to us all along. “Here it is,” he said, and gave a yank to an almost-invisible metal ring set flush with the floor. A well-oiled trap door rose out of the floor and we peered down into the darkness below.
    “It simply leads to the cellar,” Kerrigan explained. “I don’t even store anything down there anymore. Too many rats.” He lowered the candles a bit so we could see that the cellar was truly empty.
    “Well, thank you very much for the tour,” Simon told him. “I think