Live and Let Drood

place?” said Molly.
    “I suppose…this is as close as the Merlin Glass could get us to the exact coordinates,” I said. “Without setting off Crow Lee’s alarms…I did instruct the Glass to err very much on the side of caution.”
    “All right, sat nav,” said Molly. “Make yourself useful. Which way to Crow Lee’s lair?”
    “Oh, now you need me!” the sat nav said bitterly. “Well, tough. I don’t feel like it. I’ve just been put through a terrible experience and my nerves are a mess. Call back later and see if I’m home.”
    “Give me the proper directions,” I said, “or I’ll open up the Merlin Glass again and see if it can jump us any closer.”
    “Bully!” hissed the sat nav. “All right, all right. Let me see.…I’ve got a map here somewhere.…Ah. Yes. Drive straight on, third turn on the left, and then watch for the hidden entrance. Which I shall alert you to the moment I can find the bloody thing. Or maybe not! It all depends on how I feel, and don’t you forget it.”
    “See how easy that was?” I said.
    “You wait,” said Molly. “That thing will be driving us down a crease in the map before you know it.”
    “I heard that!”
    “Good!” said Molly.
    The sat nav made a loud sarcastic noise and then settled for something that sounded very like teeth grinding together.
    I drove carefully down the long leafy lane, in and out dark shadows cast by out-leaning trees, and slowed cautiously as I approached every corner, just in case there might be something lying in wait. But there wasn’t so much as a slow-moving piece of farm machinery. No traffic at all, in fact; not a jogger on a health kick or some exercise fiend hunched over a bicycle. It was as though we had the whole road to ourselves.
    “Where is everybody?” I said after a while. “Did the world come to an end during the twenty-four hours we just jumped?”
    “Don’t say that!” the sat nav said immediately. “Never give the universe ideas; it can be malevolent enough as it is.”
    “You really are paranoid, aren’t you?” said Molly.
    “I knew you were going to say that,” muttered the sat nav.
    “I think Crow Lee just likes his privacy,” I said. “Probably pays everyone to stay well away from his lair—good word, that, Molly—and use other roads that don’t go anywhere near his place. And if he really does have his own private army, he can probably put the hard word on anyone who doesn’t feel like cooperating. I doubt if Crow Lee’s actually told them he’s the Most Evil Man in the World, but the locals must have got the idea by now. Crow Lee has never been the sort to hide his awful light under a bushel.”
    “What is a bushel?” said the sat nav.
    “A dry measure containing eight gallons or four pecks,” said Molly, just a bit unexpectedly.
    “I’m glad one of us knew that,” I said. “I’d hate for us to be outsmarted by a sat nav.”
    “Turn left now!” screamed the sat nav. “Now! Right now!”
    I glimpsed the disguised turn just in time and hauled the steering wheel over. The Plymouth Fury turned smoothly into the narrow opening, hardly slowing at all. The new road was only just wide enough forone car to drive down at a time, and I quickly decided that if we met anyone coming our way they’d better be really good at reversing. The road was bounded on both sides by high hedgerows blocking out most of the light. It was as though we’d gone straight from midday to twilight. I made myself relax, unclenching my hands from the wheel.
    “Nice driving,” said Molly, staring straight ahead.
    “I thought so,” I said.
    “Hah!” said the sat nav cuttingly.
    “A little advance warning would have been helpful,” I said loudly. “Whatever happened to, In a hundred yards you will come to… ?”
    “Not my fault,” the sat nav said with a sniff. “That hidden entrance would have been invisible to your eyes, entirely undetectable. We wouldn’t have found it except for my highly trained sensors. And even I couldn’t see it till I was right on top of it. In fact, I’m not sure that entrance is really there all the time, unless you know where to look.…”
    “He stole that idea from the Droods,” I said.
    “Well,” said Molly. “At least we can be fairly certain we’ve come to the right place. At last.”
    “Oh, ye of little faith,” said the sat nav. “Wait till I’m in charge around here, and then you’ll see some smiting.”
    I slowed the car right down, making