Weeks passed. The rings were destroyed; the wolves had apparently vanished and not returned. Only Ludovico remained missing. Ludovico was the last part of the case still not accounted for. Not expecting to find anything she could understand, Mrs. Macready chose to have another look at Ludovico's flat.
Why did she persist in pursuing this? she wondered. The status quo had been defended. Yet it was all so disturbingly unsatisfactory. She had to admit that once the thought of new worlds was planted in her mind it lingered and would not go away. It was not so much that she wanted herself to go to new worlds; it was enough that they existed to be discovered, that gateways could open up for exploration. She had a longing for something new and marvelous. Ludovico's work brought back that feeling she had as a child and had largely forgotten, that sense of the vast possibilities in magic. Neither school nor work had smothered it entirely.
The apartment building's anti-magic charms had been removed by the Bureau. There was nothing to stop Mrs. Macready from entering Ludovico's studio and pacing by herself along the length of the floor. The space seemed quieter and emptier than she remembered it but that was no doubt her imagination. There were no signs that Ludovico had lived here recently. Clothes seemed to be missing from the wardrobe and books had been taken from the shelves—the gaps were plain to see—but that could have happened at any time. There was no food in the refrigerator and nothing recent in the cupboards. Whether any smaller gadgets had been taken she could not be guess. Mrs. Macready walked between the draped forms of the machines sitting inert on the wooden floor. For some reason she found it distressing. It seemed that Ludovico's long studies had come to this: incomplete machines gathering dust.
In the midst of her melancholy ruminations Mrs. Macready noticed a faint bluish glow from under a white sheet. It was the Listener. Feeling a stirring of excitement, she pulled off the sheet. On the table's surface were glowing lines of bright peacock blue. It was impossible that the agents had missed these earlier but if they had see them they would surely have taken the machine back to the Bureau for examination.
Mrs. Macready lit her wand.
"Put out the light. It's bothering my eyes."
Mrs. Macready started. Then she guessed that the voice belonged to one of the gargoyles at the corners.
"I didn't know you were, um, awake."
"At least that appallingly rude layman isn't with you this time."
"No chance of that. He's with his regiment. Will you tell me what these lines mean?"
"They show that someone has left this earthly dimension and returned to it."
"Where?"
"Here. The residence of our master."
"It was your master, then?"
"The lines do not tell that, but yes, we were witnesses."
Mrs. Macready was going to suggest that Ludovico had been hiding in another world but then thought 'hiding' was not the most complimentary of words. "How is that even possible?"
"That you must ask our master. We can assure you that he has been busy with his comings and goings between worlds."
"Why didn't any of the other agents see these lines?"
"They were meant to be seen by you."
"If he wanted to deliver a message the old wizard could have used the telephone," Mrs. Macready muttered to herself. "Or written a letter, or sent a telegram. He must have been pretty sure that I would come back here."
For weeks following, Mrs. Macready consulted with the Listener. It was not wise to go too often; she did not want to attract attention. It made no difference; there were no further signs of Ludovico's movements. No exciting new cases came to Mrs. Macready. She was occupied with desk work. She had come to the point of wondering if she might never see further traces of Ludovico.
One day the mail delivered a small package to her house. The address was written in ink, in a crabbed scrawl, like an old man's penmanship. That was enough to stimulate Mrs. Macready's curiosity. Inside was a silver pocket watch. The front cover would not open. The knobs did not turn. Mrs. Macready thought of hurling it in the waste-paper basket in frustration but there was another instinctive response that came first: she reached for her wand and tapped the cover. Magical artifacts could be charmed so that they would only react to a particular wizard. The wizard's presence transmitted through the wand was necessary and sufficient. The cover popped open. Inside was a watch face. As Mrs. Macready looked she thought that the hands appeared to be flat, as if they were only painted on. Then hands and numbers all faded to a neutral gray. Then Ludovico's face appeared in the round window.
"Greetings, Mrs. Macready. It's been a long time. Didn't I tell you I had a means for transmitting pictures without wires? I can see you very clearly!"
"How did you manage to travel off the earth? Can I guess? You had the real rings all along, isn't that right?"
"Yes. I followed you to Prof. Kirke's house, much as you tried to follow me once. I overheard just a bit of your conversation. Knowing the nature of the rings, I could cast a spell to search for them. I had just enough time to remove the rings, replace them with duplicates, and put back the dirt. I was afraid you might detect my handiwork. I did my best to make the grass grow back. Luckily for me the good Professor didn't dig in exactly the same spot and no one noticed."
"I detected someone's presence faintly when we were looking at the rings."
"You might be wondering where the substitute rings came from. I made them years ago when I was working on this problem. I had a theory about them that needed to be tested out."
"I was fighting to defend fake rings!" Mrs. Macready protested with genuine outrage.
"Oh, now, Mrs. Macready, you had no difficulty with those Brothers, or should I say, those Bureau agents disguised as Brothers. I had no doubt you could deliver the rings to your superiors. If the agents had taken the rings then I suppose Athanasius would only have destroyed them sooner. And if the Brotherhood had captured them? They would no doubt have tried them and found them to be fake. They still would not know that I had the real ones. I had to do it, Mrs. Macready. I needed to be left in peace to do my work. And it has worked brilliantly, as you would be the first to attest. Things are very quiet in the Bureau as far as my file is concerned, aren't they, Mrs. Macready?"
She calmed down. She was happy to see the old wizard in spite of herself. "If you're going to go to this much trouble to contact me, do you mind telling me where you are?"
"I'm in Lincolnshire, near the town of Stratham."
There was a familiar ring to those names. Then she recalled it. "That's where Prof. Kirke has his country house."
"Exactly. There's something very interesting going on. Care to drop by for a visit?"
Mrs. Macready's thoughts returned to her childhood in Somerset. She saw it as it was then, the white painted cottages from the Queen Anne period with their tidy flower gardens. She remembered running along the lanes leading from the fields into the village, a vision colored all in the dazzling green of mid-summer. It was a tempting prospect to go back to that kind of setting, if only for a time. On her desk was a cardboard box with the gas mask distributed by the civil defense authorities. The larger world seemed to be coming apart with terrifying speed, and if one tried to look at the future there was no image that could be formed in the mind, only the fearful gaping darkness of the unknown.
