The Eye of Zoltar

The negotiations went on like this for about twenty minutes. We were both polite but firm, and I finally agreed at eighteen, which I thought quite reasonable. It was always possible Boo might make a contribution of a few thousand, although somehow I doubted it.

‘Excellent,’ said Hilda, filling out a form. ‘How will you be paying?’

I placed the twenty-thousand-moolah letter of credit that Moobin had given me on the table and slid it across. Hilda glanced at it.

‘That’ll do for her room service and bar bills. What about the rest?’

‘Eighteen, you said,’ I told her, ‘this is good for twenty.’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘we seem to have been talking at cross-purposes. I meant eighteen million.’

‘Eighteen million?’ I said.

‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘Boo was once one of the world’s greatest sorcerers. The highest best offer was for eight million. Do you want to go away and raise the funds and then come back? I’ll have to warn you that if we don’t see any cash by Sunday, we withdraw our offer and take the best offer.’

‘Hang on—’ I began, but the Princess interrupted me.

‘We’ll pay now,’ she said, rummaging in my shoulder bag. ‘You do take all forms of currency, I take it?’

Hilda nodded and said that they took everything except goats ‘as there was something of a glut at present’ and the Princess presented her with the receipt I had received for the Bugatti Royale.

‘There,’ said the Princess, ‘this should cover it.’

Hilda looked at the note, which stated that we were owed the value of the Royale, signed by Emperor Tharv himself.

‘We don’t take receipts,’ said Hilda.

‘It’s not a receipt,’ said the Princess. ‘Technically speaking what you have there is a banknote. Any banknote is merely a promissory note issued by a government against its assets to enable the citizenry to more easily trade commodities. And by assets one might usually mean gold, although you could choose mice, turnips or tulip bulbs. Often you don’t need any assets at all – if the citizenry believe their national bank will remain solvent come what may, a simple promise is enough, backed by nothing more tangible than … confidence.’

Hilda looked at the Princess blankly, then at me.

‘Yes, I know,’ I said, ‘we’ve had to endure her for a while now but the funny thing is, she’s usually right.’

Heartened by this, the Princess continued.

‘… and since that receipt is signed by Emperor Tharv, who is the Cambrian head of state, that note is legal tender to the value of one Bugatti Royale.’

‘But it’s a car,’ I said, ‘it’s not worth eighteen million.’

The Princess smiled.

‘Not quite correct. There were only seven Bugatti Royales made, and the last one sold at auction for over twenty million. The Bugatti is not so much a car, more an exquisite work of art you can take to the shops. You’ve been driving around in a Van Gogh.’

‘You like economics, don’t you, handmaiden?’ said Hilda, picking up the telephone.

‘Is there anything else?’

‘Hello?’ said Hilda into the receiver. ‘I need to speak to the Master of the Sums.’

We waited for a few minutes while Hilda explained the situation, and after a minute or two she put her hand over the receiver.

‘The Bugatti Royale exchange rate stands at 19.2 million Cambrian plotniks,’ she said. ‘Would you like to take the deposed and penniless King Zsigsmund VIII in lieu of change?’

‘No, I’ll take a Volkswagen Beetle, please,’ I said. ‘One in particular. Pale blue, 1959 – the one Boo arrived in. The rest can be cash.’

Heading home

We stayed overnight in Cambrianopolis while Boo’s paperwork was processed. We had a good meal, a very welcome bath and slept in clean sheets for the first time in what seemed like an age. Talk between the three of us had been muted, with each of us lost in our own thoughts. We’d all be returning to our usual lives over the next few days. The Princess would go back to being a princess, I would return to Kazam and Addie would be dealing with her usual bread-and-butter tour work – taking eager and very dopey tourists into areas of high jeopardy, then attempting to stop them being eaten.

We were waiting outside the Clearance House twenty minutes before it was due to open. I’d tried to raise Kazam on the conch again, but still nothing. The good news was that my Volkswagen had been found, repaired, filled with fuel and returned the previous evening. We had spent an amusing half-hour trying to squeeze Rubber Colin inside the car, only to give up and instead lash him on to the roof rack. Addie had returned the half-track to the hire company, and we were very glad we’d taken out the Additional Collision Waiver as it was in a considerably worse state than when we hired it.

Boo did not seem particularly happy to see us, and stepped blinking into the daylight as soon as I had signed the paperwork.

‘You shouldn’t have paid the ransom,’ she said as soon as she saw me. ‘If no one paid, the kidnapping business would collapse in an afternoon. You’re all fools.’