“Well, she’s very beautiful … .”
“I’ve heard that.”
“Black hair, dark complexion, dark eyes, and she has a wonderful figure. You think of her as tall, but she isn’t really. Just medium height, maybe two or three inches taller than you are.” He paused to reflect. “She doesn’t exactly have an accent, but I don’t think English is her native language.”
“Don’t you know?”
Barnes shook his head. “It isn’t something you can ask somebody right out, now is it? She doesn’t talk about herself—or only once in a while. Sometimes she doesn’t talk at all. She’s imperious, very queenly.”
“Do you—” Sandy broke off to look at the fat girl looming beside her.
“Seventh floor, room seventy-seven, Ozzie. We’re off to see the wizard.”
“Who was Joe, and what did he want?”
“It’s Jim, I thought it was. He’s up there. He phoned down, and we’re supposed to come up. Say bye-bye to your little friend.”
Sandy jumped up. “Is that where she is? Madame Serpentina? Seven seventy-seven?”
“Ozzie, who is this?”
“I’m from Hidden Science. One of our readers tipped me that Madame Serpentina was here. I telephoned, and a man’s voice said to come over, that he’d get me in to see her.”
Candy pursed her mouth. “That must have been Jim.”
“Who’s Jim?”
“A friend of ours. Maybe you ought to come with us.”
Baker’s Dozin’
“Come in,” Stubb said, and all three tried to crowd in together, Sandy Duck caught and crushed between Candy and Barnes.
“God, but I’m glad to see you,” Candy said. She sat on a bed, kicked off one of the galoshes the police had given her, and began to rub her plump, pink foot.
“What are you doing here?” Stubb asked Barnes.
Candy grunted, obstructed by her belly as she tussled with the other galosh. “I made him come, Jim. I was talking to him while you were up here, and he hasn’t anyplace to stay tonight. He just parked his sample cases and stuff in the bus station.”
Their hostess snorted like a small, well-bred horse. “Am I to have this mob domiciled with me?”
“Not me, Madame Serpentina,” Sandy Duck declared. “I only want to interview you—I told you over the phone.”
“And I told you that I do not grant such interviews. I am a witch, not a politician!”
There was a brief flash and the click of a shutter. Sandy lowered her little one-ten and looked at it with satisfaction. “That’s great, I think. With your head back like that. It looked like you were exorcising.”
“I would gladly ring my bell and light my candle, if they would make you go. Ozzie, I certainly did not invite you to my room, but now that you have come, please get this creature out.”
Barnes smiled. “I’ll be happy to, Madame Serpentina. But of course it might be better not to have a commotion. I think the best way might be to work out a compromise that would leave good feelings all around, and since you’ve laid it in my lap—if you’ll excuse the expression—here’s what I propose. Let Sandy ask three questions. I’ll see to it that she doesn’t pack them, doesn’t ask two questions as if they were one. You answer them fully and fairly, and when you’ve answered the third, Sandy will go out with no urging. Won’t both of you agree that’s reasonable?”
Stubb chuckled. “You should have been a diplomat, Ozzie.”
“She must also promise not to harass me in the future.”
Still clutching her camera, Sandy raised her hand. “I won’t harass. I may ask to see you, but if you say no I won’t push.”
“All right then, it is agreed—with the proviso that my answers need satisfy only my own sense of my own worth. I cannot promise they will be satisfactory to you.”
“Okay!” Barnes was beaming. “What’s the first one, Sandy?”
“Wait a minute.” The associate editor’s fingers fluttered as she jammed her camera into her purse. “I have to think … .”
“I have not got all night.”
Stubb added, “Hell no. There’s something I have to talk over with the rest of you when this girl’s gone.”
“Well, I have to think about it. I came up here with a list of about a hundred questions. Now I’m only going to get to ask three. The least you people can do is give me time to decide which three it’s going to be.”
“I said, I have not got all night!”
“Hey,” Stubb put in. “I’m hungry as hell—I don’t think I’ve eaten since breakfast. While she’s making up her mind, how about getting on that phone and asking room service to bring up a club sandwich and a cup of coffee?”
Candy laid a pink hand on the telephone. “Wait a minute, if anybody’s going to eat around here, I’m in. There’s probably a menu in this drawer.”
“What is the use!” The witch gave a theatrical gesture of despair. “Perhaps we should ask for stuffed pig, did we not have one already.”
“If you mean me, forget it. A pig, maybe. But stuffed? Forget it. I’m so empty I can feel my stomach folding up. Now listen to this.” Candy held up the room service menu. “‘Pompano Amandine—luscious filets of fresh pompano, flown up daily from Miami, broiled in a mixture of farm butter, fresh-squeezed lemon juice, and grated almonds.’ That’s for me.”
“Right,” Stubb said. He had taken a small notebook and a mechanical pencil from inside his coat. “What to drink?”
“Beer. Pie afterwards. Peach, if they’ve got it. Or apple. They’ve always got apple.”
“Right. What about you?” He looked toward the witch. “It’s your room, after all.”
“I am delighted you recall it. I had thought it forgotten that I will be paying for all this.”
“Sure. By the way, it’s about time you phoned the desk to ask about your seventy bucks. But wait till I get this order in. What’ll you have?”
“I do not eat flesh or dairy products. Is there anything there for me?”
Candy scanned the menu. “Large fresh fruit salad—includes pineapples and mangoes, other fruits in season.”
“That will do. I will have a glass of white wine also.”
Stubb glanced at the salesman. “Ozzie?”
“Filet mignon with mushroom caps. Scotch on the rocks.”
“Got it. Sandy?”
“Nothing. I don’t want anything.”
“We can’t just eat in front of you. How about a drink?”
“You’re going to have coffee, aren’t you? I’ll have that. A cup of coffee.”
“Got it.” Stubb took the telephone, rang room service, and began to read out the order.
“I can’t decide which questions.” Sandy was staring at a scuffed notebook as though the scrawled words there represented some indecipherable code.
“You must,” the witch said. “Or give them to me. I will decide.” She reached for the notebook.
“A minute. Can’t you give me just a minute?”
There was a knock at the door.
Stubb put a hand over the mouthpiece and looked significantly at the witch. “There’s a peep-hole in the door. Use it.”
“I need not,” she said, standing up. “Our visitor means no harm.” She opened the door, but stood in the doorway.
A little, gray-haired woman in a shabby coat waited on the other side of the threshold. “I know you,” she said as the door opened. “You’re Miz Garth.” She sighed as a traveler who has come to the end of a long journey. “You’re a sight for some eyes, being from Mr. Free’s house and all. Can I come in?”
“I have visitors, and though you say you know me, I do not know you. What is it you wish?”
“I know all of you,” the little woman said, peering around the witch’s shoulder. “Or anyways, most all, almost. A difference without a disinclination, is that what they call it? I just want to ask you about Mr. Free.”
“Let her come in,” Stubb said. “Come in, Mrs. Baker.”