behind them.
They turned to meet the calm gaze of Double-six.
“If you’ve quite finished breakfast, Sir Philip,” he said, “Mr. Noah would be pleased to see you in his office.”
“Me too?” said Lucy, before Philip could say, “Only me, I suppose?”
“You may come too, if you wish it, your Highness,” said Double-six, bowing stiffly.
They found Mr. Noah very busy in a little room littered with papers; he was sitting at a table writing.
“Good-morning, Princess,” he said, “good-morning, Sir Philip. You see me very busy. I am trying to arrange for your next labour.”
“Do you mean my next deed of valour?” Philip asked.
“We have decided that all your deeds need not be deeds of valour,” said Mr. Noah, fiddling with a pen. “The strange labours of Hercules, you remember, were some of them dangerous and some merely difficult. I have decided that difficult things shall count. There are several things that really need doing,” he went on half to himself. “There’s the fruit supply, and the Dwellers by the sea, and— But that must wait. We try to give you as much variety as possible. Yesterday’s was an out-door adventure. Today’s shall be an indoor amusement. I say today’s but I confess that I think it not unlikely that the task I am now about to set the candidate for the post of King-Deliverer, the task, I say, which I am now about to set you, may, quite possibly, occupy some days, if not weeks of your valuable time.”
“But our people at home,” said Philip. “It isn’t that I’m afraid, really and truly it isn’t, but they’ll go out of their minds, not knowing what’s become of us. Oh, Mr. Noah! do let us go back.”
“It’s all right,” said Mr. Noah. “However long you stay here time won’t move with them. I thought I’d explained that to you.”
“But you said—”
“I said you’d set our clocks to the time of your world when you deserted your little friend. But when you had come back for her, and rescued her from the dragon, the clocks went their own time again. There’s only just that time missing that happened between your coming here the second time and your killing the dragon.”
“I see,” said Philip. But he didn’t. I only hope you do.
“You can take your time about this new job,” said Mr. Noah, “and you may get any help you like. I shan’t consider you’ve failed till you’ve been at it three months. After that the Pretenderette would be entitled to her chance.”
“If you’re quite sure that the time here doesn’t count at home,” said Philip, “what is it, please, that we’ve got to do?”
“The greatest intellects of our country have for many ages occupied themselves with the problem which you are now asked to solve,” said Mr. Noah. “Your late gaoler, Mr. Bacon-Shakespeare, has written no less than twenty-seven volumes, all in cypher, on this very subject. But as he has forgotten what cypher he used, and no one else ever knew it, his volumes are of but little use to us.”
“I see,” said Philip. And again he didn’t.
Mr. Noah rose to his full height, and when he stood up the children looked very small beside him.
“Now,” he said, “I will tell you what it is that you must do. I should like to decree that your second labour should be the tidying up of this room—all these papers are prophecies relating to the Deliverer—but it is one of our laws that the judge must not use any public matter for his own personal benefit. So I have decided that the next labour shall be the disentangling of the Mazy Carpet. It is in the Pillared Hall of Public Amusements. I will get my hat and we will go there at once. I can tell you about it as we go.”
And as they went down streets and past houses and palaces all of which Philip could now dimly remember to have built at some time or other, Mr. Noah went on:
“It is a very beautiful hall, but we have never been able to use it for public amusement or anything else. The giant who originally built this city placed in this hall a carpet so thick that it rises to your knees, and so intricately woven that none can disentangle it. It is far too thick to pass through any of the doors. It is your task to remove it.”
“Why that’s as easy as easy,” said Philip. “I’ll cut it in bits and bring out a bit at a time.”
“That would be most unfortunate for you,” said Mr. Noah. “I filed only this morning a very ancient prophecy:
“He who shall the carpet sever,
By fire or flint or steel,
Shall be fed on orange pips for ever,
And dressed in orange peel.
You wouldn’t like that, you know.”
“No,” said Philip grimly, “I certainly shouldn’t.”
“The carpet must be unravelled, unwoven, so that not a thread is broken. Here is the hall.”
They went up steps—Philip sometimes wished he had not been so fond of building steps—and through a dark vestibule to an arched door. Looking through it they saw a great hall and at its end a raised space, more steps, and two enormous pillars of bronze wrought in relief with figures of flying birds.
“Father’s Japanese vases,” Lucy whispered.
The floor of the room was covered by the carpet. It was loosely but difficultly woven of very thick soft rope of a red colour. When I say difficultly, I mean that it wasn’t just straight-forward in the weaving, but the threads went over and under and round about in such a determined and bewildering way that Philip felt—and said—that he would rather untie the string of a hundred of the most difficult parcels than tackle this.
“Well,” said Mr. Noah, “I leave you to it. Board and lodging will be provided at the Provisional Palace where you slept last night. All citizens are bound to assist when called upon. Dinner is at one. Good-morning!”
Philip sat down in the dark archway and gazed helplessly at the twisted strands of the carpet. After a moment of hesitation Lucy sat down too, clasped her arms round her knees, and she also gazed at the carpet. They had all the appearance of shipwrecked mariners looking out over a great sea and longing for a sail.
“Ha ha—tee hee!” said a laugh close behind them. They turned. And it was the motor-veiled lady, the hateful Pretenderette, who had crept up close behind them, and was looking down at them through her veil.
“What do you want?” said Philip severely.
“I want to laugh,” said the motor lady. “I want to laugh at you. And I’m going to.”
“Well go and laugh somewhere else then,” Philip suggested.
“Ah! but this is where I want to laugh. You and your carpet! You’ll never do it. You don’t know how. But I do.”
“Come away,” whispered Lucy, and they went. The Pretenderette followed slowly. Outside, a couple of Dutch dolls in check suits were passing, arm in arm.
“Help!”
