The Magic Kingdom of Landover , Volume 1 (5 page)

He cut himself short as the receptionist caught sight of Ben. Hesitating, he turned and stalked quickly into the open elevator. A moment later, the doors slid shut.

“Mr. Holiday?” the receptionist inquired, her voice soft and graveled. It was the woman he had spoken to on the phone the previous afternoon.

“Yes,” he acknowledged. “I have an appointment with Mr. Meeks.”

She picked up the phone and waited. “Mr. Holiday, sir. Yes. Yes, I will.”

She placed the receiver back in its cradle and looked up. “It will only be a few moments, Mr. Holiday. Would you have a seat, please?”

He glanced about, then took a seat at one end of a sofa. There were magazines and newspapers on a table beside him, but he ignored them. His gaze wandered idly about the reception area, a well-lighted, cheerful center with solid wood desks and cabinets and cool colors on the walls and floors.

A few minutes passed and the phone on the receptionist’s desk rang. She picked up the receiver, listened momentarily, and hung up.

“Mr. Holiday?” She rose and beckoned. “This way, please.”

She led him into a corridor that opened up behind her work area. The corridor ran past a series of closed doors and branched left and right. That was all the farther Ben could see.

“Follow the hallway back, left up the stairs to the door at its end. Mr. Meeks will be expecting you.”

She turned and walked back to her desk. Ben Holiday stood where he was for a moment, glancing first at the empty corridor, then at the retreating figure of the receptionist, then back again at the corridor.

So what are you waiting for? he asked himself admonishingly.

He went along the corridor to where it branched and turned left. The doors he passed were closed and bore no title designation or number. Fluorescent ceiling lights seemed pale against the pastel greens and blues of the corridor walls. Thick pile carpet absorbed the sound of his shoes as he walked. It was very still.

He hummed the theme from
The Twilight Zone
under his breath as he reached the staircase and began to climb.

The staircase ended at a heavy oak door with raised panels and the name “Meeks” stamped on a brass back plate screwed into the wood. He stopped before the door, knocked, turned the sculpted metal handle and stepped inside.

Meeks was standing directly in front of him.

He was very tall, well over six feet, old and bent, his face craggy, his hair white and grizzled. He wore a black leather glove on his left hand. His right hand and arm were missing completely, the empty sleeve of his corduroy jacket tucked into a lower pocket. Pale blue eyes that were hard and steady met Ben’s. Meeks looked as if he had fought and survived more than a few battles.

“Mr. Holiday?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper. He sounded a good deal like his receptionist. Ben nodded. “I’m Meeks.” The head dipped slightly. He didn’t offer his hand and neither did Ben. “Please come in and have a chair.”

He turned and shuffled away, hunching as he went as if his legs no longer worked properly. Ben followed him wordlessly, glancing about as he went. The office was elegant, a richly appointed room furnished with a massive old desk of scrolled oak, matching chairs with stuffed leather seats and backs, and workbenches and endtables covered with charts and magazines and what appeared to be work files. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined three walls, filled with ancient tomes and artifacts of all kinds. A bank of windows comprised the fourth wall, but the curtains were drawn tight across them and there were only the ceiling lamps to give the room its oddly muted light. Deep pile carpet of earthen brown sprouted from the floor like dried saw grass. The room smelled faintly of furniture polish and old leather.

“Sit down, Mr. Holiday.” Meeks beckoned to a chair drawn up before the desk, then shuffled his way around to the overstuffed swivel chair on the other side, easing himself down into the worn leather gingerly. “Can’t move like I used to. Weather tightens the bones. Age and weather. How old are you, Mr. Holiday?”

Ben glanced up, midway through the process of seating himself. The sharp, old eyes were fixed on him. “Forty, come January,” he answered.

“A good age.” Meeks smiled faintly, but without humor. “A man’s still got his strength at forty. He knows most of what he’s going to learn, and he’s got the strength to put it to good use. Is that so with you, Mr. Holiday?”

Ben hesitated. “I guess so.”

“That’s what your eyes say. Eyes tell more about a man than anything he says. Eyes reflect a man’s soul. They reflect a man’s heart. Sometimes they even tell the truths a man wants to keep hidden.” He paused. “Can I offer you something to drink? Coffee, a cocktail, perhaps?”

“No, nothing, thank you.” Ben shifted in his chair impatiently.

“You don’t believe that it’s possible, do you?” Meeks’ brows furrowed deeply, his voice soft. “Landover. You don’t believe it exists.”

Ben studied the other man thoughtfully. “I’m not sure.”

“You appreciate the possibilities, but you question them, too. You seek the challenges that are promised, but you fear they may be only paper windmills. Think of it—a world like nothing anyone on this earth has ever seen! But it sounds impossible. If I might invoke a time-honored cliché, it sounds too good to be true.”

“It does.”

“Like a man walking on the moon?”

Ben thought a moment. “More like truth in lending. Or full faith and credit between sister states. Or perhaps consumer protection against false advertising.”

Meeks stared at him. “You are a lawyer, Mr. Holiday?”

“I am.”

“And you believe in our system of justice, then?”

“I do.”

“You do, but you know as well that it doesn’t always work, don’t you? You want to believe in it, but it disappoints you much too often.”

He waited. “That’s a fair statement, I suppose,” Ben admitted.

“And you think it might be that way with Landover as well.” Meeks made it a statement of fact, not a question. He leaned forward, his craggy face intense. “Well, it isn’t. Landover is exactly what the advertisement promises. It has everything that the advertisement says that it has and much more—things that are only myth in this world, things only barely imagined. But real in Landover, Mr. Holiday. Real!”

“Dragons, Mr. Meeks?”

“All of the mythical fairy creatures, Mr. Holiday—exactly as promised.”

Ben folded his hands before him. “I’d like to believe you, Mr. Meeks. I came to New York to inquire about this … catalogue item because I want to believe it exists. Can you show me anything that would help prove what you say?”

“You mean flyers, color brochures, pictures of the land, references?” His face tightened. “They don’t exist, Mr. Holiday. This item is a carefully protected treasure. The specifics of where it lies, what it looks like, what it offers—that is all privileged information which can be released only to the buyer whom I, as the seller’s designated agent, ultimately select. As a lawyer, I am sure that you can appreciate the limitations imposed upon me by the word ‘privileged,’ Mr. Holiday.”

“Is the identity of the seller privileged as well, Mr. Meeks?”

“It is.”

“And the reason that this item is being offered for sale in the first place?”

“Privileged, Mr. Holiday.”

“Why would anyone sell something as marvelous as this fantasy kingdom, Mr. Meeks? I keep asking myself that question. I keep asking myself if I’m not somehow buying a piece of the Brooklyn Bridge. How do I know that your seller even has the authority to sell Landover?”

Meeks smiled, an attempt at reassurance. “That was all checked carefully prior to listing. I supervised the inquiry myself.”

Ben nodded. “So it all comes down to your word, doesn’t it?”

Meeks sat back again. “No, Mr. Holiday. It comes down to the worldwide reputation of Rosen’s as a department store that always delivers what it offers exactly as promised in its catalogues and advertisements. It comes down to the terms of the contract the store offers to the buyer on specialty items such as this one—a contract that permits recovery of the entire purchase price less a small handling fee should the item fail to prove satisfactory. It comes down to the way we do business.”

“Could I see a copy of this contract?”

Meeks bridged the fingers of his gloved hand against his chin and stroked the ridges and lines of his face. “Mr. Holiday, I wonder if we might first back this conversation up a bit to permit me to fulfill the terms of my consignment of this specialty item. You are here to decide whether or not you wish to purchase Landover. But you are also here so that I might decide whether or not you qualify as a purchaser. Would a few questions to that end be an imposition?”

Ben shook his head. “I wouldn’t think so. But I’ll tell you if they are.”

Meeks smiled like the Cheshire Cat and nodded his understanding.

For the next thirty minutes or so, he asked his questions. He asked them very much the way a skilled attorney would ask them of a witness at an oral deposition in pre-trial discovery—with tact, with brevity, and with purpose. Meeks knew what he was looking for, and he probed for it with the experienced touch of a surgeon. Ben Holiday had seen a good many trial lawyers in his years of practice, some of them more accomplished than he. But he had never seen anyone as good as Meeks.

In the end, a lot of ground was covered. Ben had graduated fifteen years earlier from Chicago University’s School of Law, Order of the Coif,
summa cum laude
. He had gone into practice immediately with one of the larger firms, then left after five years to form his own firm with Miles, specializing in litigation. He had won a number of nationally reported corporate law cases as a plaintiff’s attorney and settled dozens more. He was respected by his fellow attorneys as one of the best in his field. He had served as president of the Chicago Bar Association and as chairman of a number of committees on the Illinois State Bar. There was talk of running him for president of the American Trial Lawyers Association.

He came from a very wealthy family. His mother had been born into money; his father had made his in futures. Both were dead. He had no brothers or sisters. With Annie’s death, he had been left essentially alone. There were some distaff cousins on the West Coast and an uncle in Virginia, but he hadn’t seen any of them for better than five years. He had few close friends—in truth, he had only Miles. His colleagues respected him, but he kept them at a distance. His life in the past few years revolved almost exclusively around his work.

“Have you any administrative experience, Mr. Holiday?” Meeks asked him at one point, a rather veiled look to the hard, old eyes that suggested the question asked something more.

“No.”

“Any hobbies?”

“None,” he answered, thinking as he did that it was true, that he in fact had no hobbies nor personal pastimes save for the time he spent in training at Northside. He almost amended his answer, then decided it did not matter.

He gave to Meeks the financial statement he had prepared in response to the catalogue advertisement, detailing his net worth. Meeks examined it wordlessly, nodded in satisfaction and set it on the desk before him.

“You are an ideal candidate, Mr. Holiday,” he said softly, the whisper quality of his voice becoming almost a hiss. “You are a man whose roots can be easily severed—a man who will not have to worry about leaving family or friends who will inquire too closely of his whereabouts. Because, you see, you will not be able to communicate with anyone but myself during your first year away. That is one of the conditions of acceptance. This should pose no problem for you. You are also a man with sufficient assets to make the purchase—hard assets, not paper assets. You can appreciate the difference. But most importantly, perhaps, you are a man who has something to offer as King of Landover. I don’t suppose you’ve thought much of that, but it is something that matters a great deal to those for whom we act as agent. You have something very special to offer.”

He paused. “Which is?” Ben asked.

“Your professional background, Mr. Holiday. You are a lawyer. Think of the good that you can do as not simply one who interprets the law but as one who makes it. A king needs a sense of justice to reign. Your intelligence and your education should serve you well.”

“You mean that I shall have need of them in Landover, Mr. Meeks?”

“Certainly.” The other’s face was expressionless. “A king always has need of intelligence and education.”

For an instant Ben thought he detected something in the other’s voice that made the statement almost a private joke. “You have personal knowledge of what a king needs, Mr. Meeks?”

Meeks smiled, hard and quick. “If you mean, do I have personal knowledge of what a King of Landover needs, the answer is yes. Background is required of our clients in a listing such as this, and the background provided me suggests that Landover’s ruler will have need of the qualities that you possess.”

Ben nodded slowly. “Does this mean that my application has been accepted?”

The old man leaned back again in his chair. “What of your own questions, Mr. Holiday? Hadn’t we better address those first?”

Ben shrugged. “I’ll want them addressed sometime. It might as well be now. Why don’t we begin with the contract—the one that’s guaranteed to protect me from making what most people would consider a foolish investment.”

“You are not most people, Mr. Holiday.” The craggy face dropped a shade, changing the configuration of lines and hollows like a twisted rubber mask. “The agreement is this. You will have ten days to examine your purchase with no obligation. If at the end of that time you find it not to be as advertised or to be otherwise unsatisfactory, you may return here for a full refund of your purchase price less a handling fee of five percent. A reasonable charge, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

“That’s it? That’s the whole contract?” Ben was incredulous. “All it takes is my decision to back out?”

“That’s all it takes.” Meeks smiled. “Of course, the decision must be made in the first ten days, you understand.”

Ben stared at him. “And everything that’s been advertised in the catalogue will be there as promised? All of it? The dragons and knights and witches and warlocks and fairy creatures?”