The office cat gave Tracy a start, but in a moment he saw that it wasn't Meg. But the creature gave him something to think about. He began to wonder what the familiar would try next.
He was at cross-purposes with Meg. Meg had little time, but lots of magic. Tracy had little magic, but it was to his advantage to play for time. Meg had said she wouldn't outlast Gwinn. How long would she last? Maybe she'd grow more and more tenuous, till she finally vanished completely.
Meanwhile, he had the book.
But he wasn't certain yet of the best way to use it. He kept it handy, just in case Barney Donn was in Meg's employ. The gambler had a reputation for squareness, but he was a decidedly tough customer.
The hotel clerk took their names and said to go right up. It was a big hotel, one of the best in Los Angeles. And Donn had taken a suite.
He greeted them at the door, a stocky, swarthy man with a broken nose and a broad, toothy grin. "Jeez, Sam Tracy," he said. "Who's the punk with you?"
"Hi, Barney. This is Tim Hatton. We're both on the Journal. And you can drop the colloquialisms. We'll give you the sort of write-up you want, anyway."
Donn chuckled. "Come on in. I got in the habit of using this lingo in Chi, and I can't break myself of it. I'm a Jekyll and Hyde. Come in, will you?"
Tracy wasn't as relieved as he might have been. As Hatton went on into the apartment, he lingered a bit behind, touching Donn's sleeve. The gambler opened wide brown eyes.
"What's up?"
"What are you doing here?"
"Vacation," Donn said. "And I want to do some gambling out here. I hear nice things about it."
"That's the only reason?"
"Yeah. I get it. You're thinking-" Donn chuckled again. "Look, Tracy. You put the squeeze on me once, but you won't do it again. I cleaned up my record, see?"
"So have I," the reporter said ambiguously. "Matter of fact, I'm sorry I had to ask you for that dough, but-"
"Money!" Donn said, shrugging. "It ain't hard to make. If you're thinking I hold a grudge, the answer is no. Sure, I'd like to get that dough back from you-just to square accounts-but what the hell! I never killed anybody in my life."
And, with that comforting assurance, he led the way into the next room.
Two men were sitting at a table, local gambling big shots, and they were watching Hatton do card tricks. The photographer was enjoying himself immensely. His cigarette was on the verge of burning his lower lip, and he shuffled and flipped the cards with remarkable dexterity.
"See?" he said.
"How about a hand?" Donn asked Tracy. "We haven't played for years."
Tracy hesitated. "O.K. A hand or two. But I'm not sticking my neck out." He knew that Donn was an honest gambler, or he might have refused outright.
Liquor was on the table, and Donn poured and passed the glasses. "I played a little on the plane, but I want to make sure my luck's holding in California. I had a good streak at Hialeah… Stud, eh?"
"Ante?" Hatton was beaming.
"Five hundred."
"Uh!"
"Make it a hundred to start, then," Donn grinned. "Can do?"
Hatton nodded and took out his wallet. Tracy did the same, flipping bills on the table and exchanging them for chips. The other two men silently drank whiskey and waited.
The first hand was mild, Donn winning the pot with a low straight, nothing wild. Hatton took the next hand, and Tracy the third, which was satisfyingly fat with blue chips. He said, "One more, and I check out."
"Aw-" That was Hatton.
"Stay if you like," Tracy told him. "It's a straight game, but Barney's got card sense."
"Always had," Donn said, shuffling. "Even as a kid. Stick around a while, Sam."
Tracy drew to a flush, and missed. Donn won. He raked in a few chips as the reporter stood up.
"That's all, Barney. Let's have the interview, and we'll push off. Or I will, if Hatton wants to stay."
"Stick around," Donn repeated, his glance meeting Tracy's.
"Sorry-"
"Look, Sam," Donn said argumentatively, "somehow I got a feeling you owe me some money. Now, why not be fair? I hear you're pretty well fixed these days. Don't be a piker, for Pete's sake."
"You-uh-insist?" Tracy's voice was strained.
Donn grinned. He nodded.
Tracy sat down again, chewing his lip. He scowled at the deck.
"Think it's cold?" Donn asked. "Want to deal?"
"You don't play with marked cards," Tracy admitted. "Oh, hell! Let's have some chips. What am I worrying about?" He emptied his wallet.
Fifteen minutes later he said, "Take a check?"
Half an hour later he was signing IOU's.
The game was fast, hard, and dangerous. It was straight, too, but no less perilous for that. The laws of chance were consistently kicked in the pants. Some men have a talent for cards, a sixth sense which is partly memory and partly a keen understanding of psychology. Donn had that talent.
The pendulum swung back and forth. The ante went up. Gradually Tracy began to win again. He and Donn were the heavy winners, and at the end of an hour and a half, he and Hatton were the only ones left in the game, except, of course, Donn himself.
Once Tracy thought Donn was bluffing, and called, but he was wrong. Meantime the stakes mounted. At last Tracy got what he thought was a good hand, and raised on the strength of it.
Donn met and raised. Hatton did the same. Tracy considered his cards-and thrust a stack of blues into the center.
He wrote another check, bought more chips, and raised again. Hatton dropped out. Donn met and raised.
As Tracy pushed his last chips across the table, he realized that this cleaned out his bank account. Simultaneously he felt a curious warmth against his hip.
The book.
Was there another page reference on the cover? Tracy didn't know whether to be glad or sorry. He met Donn's eyes, brown and sparkling with excitement, and saw that the gambler was going to raise again.
He couldn't meet another raise.
He stood up abruptly. "Excuse me. Back in a minute," he said, and before Donn could protest, he headed for the bathroom. The door slammed shut behind him, and he jerked the book out of his pocket. The page number, black against luminous white, was 12.
And the message was: "He's bluffing."
"I'll be damned," Tracy said under his breath.
"That," a low voice remarked, "is inevitable, I'd say. But such perspicacity is rare-eh, Belphegor?"
"Bah!" was the hoarse reply. "Always talk. Action, I'd say-quick, hard, and bloody."
Tracy looked around and saw nothing unusual. He fumbled for the knob behind him, opened the door, and stepped back into the room where he had left Donn and the others.
Only, he saw as he turned, it wasn't the same room.
It was not, strictly speaking, a room at all. It was a three-dimensional surrealist landscape come to life. Overhead was empty gray sky, and a flat plain, curiously distorted as to perspective, stretched to a foreshortened horizon. Odd objects were here and there, inanimate, and with no sensible reason for their presence. Most of them were partially melted.
Three creatures sat in a row facing Tracy.
One was a lean man with huge feet and the head of a unicorn. One was a saturnine, naked giant with malformed horns and a lion's tail. One was-ugh! A sad face with a crown regarded Tracy ill-temperedly. From the bulbous body, with its twelve spider's legs, grew the head of a frog and the head of a cat-an unholy trinity, as it were.
Tracy turned around. The door through which he had come was still there, but it was just a door, standing unsupported, with no framework around it. Moreover, it seemed to be locked, as he found after a frantic tug at the knob.
"Quick, hard, and bloody," said the same hoarse voice, which came from the squinting, saturnine giant with the lion's tail. "Trust me for that."