Free The Paper Grail by James P. Blaylock Page A

window they’d come to. Oh, well, Howard thought. That’s pretty much where he would have put it, anyway. They’d saved him the work.
    After a moment he drove away north, mulling over the last twenty-four hours. Mr. Jimmers had told him nothing.
Had
the sketch been stolen? Or had Mr. Jimmers put it somewhere for safekeeping? Is that what he had in the mysterious tin shed? Howard hoped not. The thing wouldn’t be worth hanging in an incinerator after a week outdoors in a misty climate like this. You might as well throw it in the ocean. Howard would have to deal with Mr. Jimmers again soon. He would get Uncle Roy to help him. Maybe he could fake up some sort of story about the museum paying a commission so as to be able to slip poor old Uncle Roy a couple of hundred dollars. He’d have to be canny about it, though.
    He thought momentarily about being trapped in the attic last night, how he had been scared half witless and then had been furious with Jimmers. It still wasn’t funny. Not really. But it wasn’t a matter for the police, either. There was too much that he didn’t understand, too much mystery hovering on the fog. Maybe he was done with it; maybe not. He would ask Sylvia, appeal to her inherent honesty. Sylvia wasn’t the cipher that Jimmers was.
    Sylvia. Things had started off unevenly there. It seemed to him suddenly that he had made an off-key, Blinky the Clown impression on Sylvia. On an impulse he sucked his stomach in a little and sat up straighter, regarding himself in the mirror. He wasn’t hopeless, anyway. His face was still pretty lean. Some people developed moon faces when they gained weight, but he had never had that problem. He had a rapid-fire metabolism that let him eat anything at all without regret, and he took that to be a sign of good health. At times, when he really overdid it, he developed a moderate spare tire, which, unless it got out of hand, was easy to hide. At least the north coast beaches didn’t lend themselves to sunbathing. He could keep his shirt on and his stomach pulled in.
    Maybe he would start jogging again, too. And no more junk food, either—no doughnuts or Twinkies. It would be a new regime, the Sunberry Farms approach, starting after breakfast, which he’d eat in Fort Bragg and which would consist of a hell of a stack of pancakes. An hour a day chopping wood for Uncle Roy wouldn’t hurt him any, either. He would earnhis keep is what he would do. He rolled down the window and inhaled hugely. The air was full of the ocean and the musty smell of autumn vegetation. He was surprised at how good he felt, despite having been tortured in an attic. It was a brand-new day.
    Maybe he’d be better off if the Hoku-sai
were
gone. It would almost sever his connection with the museum. Over the past week the sketch had become a sort of carrot on a stick. Its having disappeared would free him, wouldn’t it? If he managed to get hold of it, he’d have to haul it back down south, out of duty, and actually put together the display of Japanese artwork that he’d been mouthing off about. He had worked hard at selling the idea to Mrs. Gleason, although now he didn’t know quite why. The museum seemed a long, long way off. If he walked back into it today, it would seem utterly alien to him. Before long he would forget where the paper clips were kept and how the coffee-maker worked. Maybe he had come north to stay, and he was just now realizing it.
    He flicked sand out of the corner of his eye, which looked almost unnaturally blue because of the reflection of the sky in the rearview mirror. His hair was cooperating, too. It was a little long, but what the hell. He would have to shave, though. His beard, when he tried to grow one years ago, had looked like something bought cheap at a swap meet. It was getting gray, too—a constant blow to the vanity, and a reminder that the years were flying past, that he was older now. The thought sobered him just a little, and suddenly he was cold