Free Live Free

Prophecy … And A Poll

“What the hell,” Stubb said. “What the hell?”

He was the only one who spoke.

“Listen, buddy,” he said to the bellman, “do you mean the house dick? You can see for yourself that there’s nothing going on here. This lady,” he gestured toward Sandy Duck, “came up to interview your guest for her magazine, and the rest of us came to talk business with her over a late snack. What the hell’s wrong with that?”

“Not Mr. Kramer,” the bellman said. “The real authorities.” He did not say that he wished he could say Scotland Yard, but he did. “I told him I wanted to see his credentials, and he showed me his badge. It was the real thing.”

Candy looked toward Stubb. “Jim … ?”

“Yeah. This sounds like my department. Where is he?”

“Three doors down. Seven seventy-one. It’s an empty room.”

“He didn’t rent it?”

The bellman shook his head. “When he opened the door to talk, I saw he’d taped the latch, so he could go out without the door’s locking behind him. If he’d paid at the desk, he’d have a key.”

“Right. He stopped you while you were coming with the cart?”

The bellman nodded.

“And what’d he say?”

“He asked where I was taking it, and I told him. Then he said when I got finished to come back and knock on his door and tell him what I saw in here. He said to keep my eyes open. That’s when I told him I wanted to look at his credentials and he showed me his badge.”

“You’re going to need an excuse for staying in here so long. What do you plan to tell him?”

The bellman thought for a moment. “I could say the lady was foreign, and she asked me a lot of stuff about how to get around the city—where things were.”

“Then he’d say what about the other people—he must have seen all the dishes on your cart—why didn’t she ask them? And he’ll sure as hell want to know where she wanted to go. No, you tell him that we had a bunch of papers spread all over the table. You couldn’t see what they were about. We made you wait until we had shuffled them around some before we put them away so you could serve the food. We didn’t say anything particular while we were doing it. Just, ‘Here, you take this,’ and ‘Are these in order?’ Stuff like that. You got it?”

The bellman nodded. “Is it okay to tell him what you look like?”

“You’ll have to, but if he’s got the room staked out he’s probably made us already. Now listen, he’ll take you over everything three or four times if he’s a good cop. Keep it simple and remember to forget anything you could possibly forget. He didn’t give you his name, did he?”

“No.”

“He didn’t say, ‘I’m detective so-and-so?’ Anything like that?”

“No. I would have remembered.”

“You said he showed you his badge. What was the number?”

The bellman hesitated, then said, “I guess I didn’t notice.”

“Okay, when you go back, don’t knock like he told you. Go straight past. He’ll stop you again. Tell him you’re not sure about him, and say you want to see his badge again. Take a good look—make him let you see it in a good light—and remember the number. When you get back downstairs again, phone this room and tell me what it was. What did he look like?”

The bellman thought for a moment. “Not as big as most of them. I’d say maybe just over middle size. Big nose. He had a bandage around his head.”

“Forget the badge number,” Stubb told him. “I know who he is.”

“So do the rest of us,” Candy said when the bellman was gone.

“Except her.” Stubb nodded toward Sandy Duck.

“You’re right,” Sandy said. “I certainly don’t know. I also don’t know why the police should want to watch Madame Serpentina. Of course they always view major psychics with distrust except when they beg them to solve their cases for them without a fee.”

The witch smiled. “I believe you yourself wanted a certain prediction. I did not hear any mention of payment, but then perhaps I was inattentive.”

“I wish I could,” Sandy said frankly. “I can’t. Our magazines don’t have the money. I’ll tell you what we’ll do, though. Any time you want, we’ll run a one-page ad for free.”

The witch laughed.

Stubb said, “Don’t knock it. Sandy, I’ll send you Madame Serpentina’s copy tomorrow. To run as soon as possible, either magazine. How do you want it?”

“If there are pictures, we’ll need camera-ready copy. If it’s just text, you can tell us what you want to say and we’ll lay it out and spec the type.”

“But now,” the witch said, “I must earn this advertisement with my prediction. First, however, I will answer several more questions, questions you would ask if I permitted them. Yes, I did indeed see something in the mirror. No, you would not have seen what I saw, had you looked—you would merely have ruined the operation. And lastly, what I have done is the verso of necromancy; I summoned the spirits of the unborn to reveal the future.

“You desired to know of a great event—one affecting the entire nation—that will occur within a decade. Is that correct?”

Pencil poised, Sandy nodded.

“Very well. The greatest event of the coming decade will be the quadrumvirate. Four leaders, unknown today, shall unite to take political, financial, artistic, and judicial power. They shall create a revolution of thought. Many who are now rulers shall be imprisoned or exiled. Many who are now powerless shall rise to places of great authority. The rich shall be made poor, and the poor rich. Old crimes, long concealed, shall be made public, and their perpetrators given to the people as to a pride of lions. The four shall be hated and idolized, but their rule will not end within the period specified by my prediction. That is all I was told.”

The pencil flew. “You don’t know the names of these men?”

“No. That information would be very difficult to obtain. The spirits, as you should know, have great difficulty providing answers in terms of specific words. It is somewhat as though you—who we shall say speak Chinese—were to ask a woman who knew no other tongue the name of an American she met last year. If you were most fortunate, you might hear ‘Beloved Disciple of the Iron-Smiter,’ if the name was John Smith.”

“They will come to power in ten years?”

“Much sooner, I think.”

Sandy rose. “I realize I’ve asked more questions than the three we agreed on, and I don’t want to wear out my welcome. Mr. Barnes, Ms. Garth, I want to thank you for bringing me up here. I know as well as you do that I couldn’t have gotten into this room if it hadn’t been for you. Mr. Stubb, you’ve come to my rescue more than once, and I appreciate it. Madame Serpentina, I know you never grant interviews, but you’ve given me one tonight and let me take a picture and everything, and I appreciate it more than I can say.”

The witch inclined her head graciously. Candy looked embarrassed, Barnes grinned, and Stubb snorted.

“I’ll go now, but I want you to know that nothing I’ve heard in here—I mean, nothing beyond what I myself was told—will go into my article.”

Stubb said, “I’m a good deal more worried about what you’re going to tell the cop. Do you want to talk to him?”

Sandy shook her head. “Not if I can help it.”

“Swell. According to what the bellhop said, he’s between us and the elevators; but this hotel’s built in a hollow square, if you know what I mean. Turn right instead of left when you go out the door, and you should be able to walk around the long way and get to them without passing his room. Will you do that?”

“Of course. But if I’m stopped, I won’t tell lies—I just won’t say anything. The courts may say the police can examine a journalist’s notes now, but they won’t find anything there I wouldn’t put in my story.”

“Good girl,” Stubb said. He opened the door for her.

Candy sighed as it closed. “Wow. That’s over. Ozzie, why’d you have to bring her up here?” She tried to cross her legs, failed, and settled for crossing her ankles.

Barnes shrugged. “She looked like she needed help.”

Stubb said, “Our friend Ozzie’s a soft touch. How was your fish?”

“Tasty, only there wasn’t enough of it, or enough beer. You want the rest of your sandwich? How about that pickle?”

“You can have them.” Stubb pushed his plate over. Barnes said, “It’s that cop that got hit with the ax, isn’t it? Sergeant Proudy, his name was. I let him in this morning—my God, it feels like a year ago.”

“We’ve all had a tough day.”

Her mouth full, Candy mumbled, “’S not over yet.” She swallowed. “Why’s he watching us?”

Stubb nodded. “You’re right, that’s the first thing we have to talk about. Anybody got any ideas?”

“Maybe they found out about Ozzie calling all those salesmen. I heard you and Ozzie outside the house through the busted wall. Maybe somebody else heard you too.”

“So what? It was just creating a nuisance, and if they wanted him they could pick him up. Besides, Proudy’s not on duty.”

“You’ve been taking lessons from the Wicked Witch of the West over there, Jim. There’s no way you could know that.”

“Nuts.” Stubb leaned back in his chair, removing his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know how she does it—or if she really does. But I know how I do it, and anybody willing to think for a minute could do it too. Proudy got it with the spike end of a fire ax. I saw it. He got stitches and bandages and so on. You saw that, in fact you helped. He may not be in a hospital. He may not even be lying down, even if he should be. But there’s no way in hell the Department would put him back on duty after that. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not till he’s pretty well healed up.”

The witch pushed aside her fruit and lit a cigarette. “You are right in what you say. But that is not the question.”

Stubb nodded.

Barnes said, “Let me try. What are we going to do about him?”

“That’s not it either,” Stubb told him. “Anyway, who says we have to do anything?”

“Why,” the witch said. “That is what we must discover, Ozzie.”

Candy was staring at the witch and Stubb. “All of a sudden it seems like you two are pretty close.”

“Yeah. I’ll tell you about that in a minute. For now, let’s get back to Proudy. Anybody got any more suggestions about what he might be up to?”

Barnes said, “Remember those women who came to see Mrs. Baker? Could he be working for them? And anyway, what are they doing?”

“I don’t know,” Stubb said. “When she told us all that, I more than half thought she was making it up, or blowing a couple of nosy neighbors into spy stuff. Now I don’t know.”

Candy asked, “You think he could be working for them?”

“No. Not working for them. But he could have got onto them, and he might have talked to the Baker woman for all we know, and be trying to cut himself a piece of cake. He’s on his own for sure, and when a cop goes on his own when he could be home in bed, he smells a promotion or money. Any of you a mass murderer?”

“Don’t try to be funny, Jim.”

“Okay, then it’s money. We’ll talk about that later too. Should we ring him up and ask what the hell? I’m serious. He’s in seven seven one, and all we have to do is pick up the phone and dial his room.”

“I’m for it,” Barnes said. “After all, we carried him in and got him patched up after one of his own men hit him. If he’s after us now, I think we’re entitled to some kind of explanation.”

“One in favor,” Stubb said. “How about you, Candy?”

“You know as well as I do that it’ll end up with me getting busted.”

“One against.” Stubb glanced at the witch.

“It seems to me we should know more.”

“One for later. Make that two for later—when I talk to a cop, I like to have something I can pry with. Later it is.”

The telephone rang.