"Ho! I do, do I?" The unexpected interruption made them all jump. Gludwig, wakened by Kabumpo's first whisper, had lain silently watching from beneath his long lashes. Now tossing back the silk covers, he sprang up, throwing the staff straight at Randy's heart.
"Now let's see what you'll turn to," he panted savagely.
Too startled to move or act, Kabumpo and Jinnicky watched in fascinated horror as the staff struck. And strike it did, but instead of petrifying Randy, the rod passed like a flash of lightning through the young King's body and returned to Gludwig's hand, leaving Randy live and lively as ever he was, lively enough in fact to leap forward, snatch the dangerous weapon and bring it down hard on his red-wigged head. With a thud that splintered Jinnicky's best bed, Gludwig fell back.
"Hah! What did I tell you?" exclaimed Randy, and indeed the former holder of the castle in his petrified condition looked as much like a brass monkey as Randy had said he would.
"Oh, my, mercy me! Oh, my! Oh, me!" With trembling fingers the Red Jinn began to feel Randy all over. "With my own eyes I saw that staff go through you, lad, yet here you are—no mark—no statue. I declare I, I'm—" With tears running down his nose, Jinnicky embraced Randy over and over.
"Out of that bed with you!" screamed Kabumpo, "OUT!" And winding his trunk round the rigid Gludwig, he flung him violently out of the window. As the image fell with a resounding clunk into the vegetable garden below, the Elegant Elephant sank on his haunches and mopped his brow with one of the red silk bed sheets.
"Never—never do I hope to live through such a moment again," he groaned, blowing his trunk explosively. "I thought you were frozen and done for, my boy—done for!" Rocking to and fro, Kabumpo blinked the tears out of his eyes.
"I don't understand yet why I wasn't," admitted Randy, wriggling out of Jinnicky's grasp and touching the spot where the staff had struck him.
"Someone or something was protecting you," declared the little Jinn, nodding his head like a mandarin. "Do you carry any charms or talismans against evil, my boy?"