He fired again, and leaped into the air with a yell. "Yippee! Twenty in a row! Hoi' me down, brethren before I bump the angels in the butt! It's Wild Basil, the terror of the mountains and scourge of the plains!"
Eleven:
At the price of ten dollars and a couple of hours' conversation about the iconography of Memphis, Finch secured a hand-colored map of the city from its only map-maker, and managed to lay off a measured mile of river with more or less accuracy. He took the crew over it a short time later, timing them downstream and then back. The glance at his watch after he shouted "Way enough!" for the return trip made him purse his lips in astonishment. "
"What's the matter Arthur, ants in yore pants?" asked Rhett who, Finch had observed, was often driven to this form of humor by inability to think up anything else quickly enough.
"No, crewmen on the brain," he replied, happily. "Either there's something wrong or you're a lot better than I thought. You made 3:02 on the mile downstream, 3:51 up—why even the average, 3:26-1/2, is about a world's record as far as I know!"
The boat broke out into pleased grins and then chatter, while Roderick MacWhorter Hennessey leaned forward to pet his cat, but over the rest rose the voice of Pritchard. "What did you think for? If we couldn't row like champions, wouldn't be no sense in rowin' whatever."
"Tha's about right," said the bullet-headed man who had appeared with a hangover. "I had me a dream last night about lickin' them guys, and that wouldn't happen less'n we were gonna do it."
The remark set Finch wondering whether prophetic dreams were a part of this experience, along with genuine mind-reading, and then he trailed off into a mood of abstraction where he asked himself whether any dream could furnish details as accurate as the feel of the water in which he trailed his fingers, or the sight of a bird just rising from the river, folding up its feet like an airplane's undercarriage. Surely, if this were an experience like that in the too-rational world, he could have located the man with the carnelian cube by this time. Or would he? Old Tiridat's last words in the house on the Cappadocian hillside had been distinctly threatening^—something about the cube taking you to heaven, but you just wished you would die. Maybe he was supposed to stay in this individualists' heaven till he was willing to accept any escape from it ...
He looked up at the dock and saw one thing he would be quite willing to escape from, one way or another. She waved him a hand as he was on his way to dress, but did not say anything till they were in the car and rushing-along through a series of streets he did not recognize; and even then it was he who broke the silence.
"Dear lady, am I playing Jose to your Carmen?"
"You t'ink I fool you like her?" She looked at him intently. "No—I see. You are making conversations to amuse. And I am not being amuse'. Perhaps Richard will need a new manager for his crew if I say."
With a twinge of apprehension, Finch recognized that she was perfectly capable of putting him on the spot in that or any other way, if she found him too unresponsive. He sighed ruefully. "That's what comes of being a good talker," he said. "Everyone listens to what you say as a work of art instead of an expression of feeling. Even if I told you I had fallen in love with you, you'd be listening for epigrams instead of heart-beats."
"You haf not try that one," she said, and lowered her eyes.
Nothing venture, nothing gain. He slipped his arm around her shoulders and lifted her face for the kiss. Not bad, either. It was she who pulled away first, patting his cheek.
"So now we are lofers," she said. "Shall we fly?" "Whereto?"
"Anywhere. The ends of the earth!"
"Not with Janus in the front seat," he said, practically. "He'd get away and tell the boss, and besides I can't quit till after the boat-race."
"Oooh!" She produced a lace-edged handkerchief and burst into tears, sobbing through them: "Men are—s— slaves. You—you are nefer doing anythings beautifully on impulse."
"Right now my only impulse is to see one of your friend Calioster's seances," he said, clutching desperately at the first subject that might dam up the flow of salt water.
Instantly, she was all smiles again. "You are right. The Master, he will help us. He is wonderful! He can know mahatmas by their breathing. Perhaps you are one, my Chevalier, my Siegfried!"
(This is what he got, he thought, for dreaming of a fascinating bitch after a life of college-town domesticity.)
"What a compliment!" he said aloud. "Gave up his sweetheart to the old king in exchange for a fat blonde and some money, didn't he?"
"I do not mean it so. I am t'inking of how he goes to dangers to wake her from sleeps. After—does it matter? To be fait'ful, it is the virtue of a clock, a machine. Come—I know where—"
She leaned toward him with half-parted lips, but he could not bring himself to like that perfume she was using, and besides, just at that moment, he caught a glimpse of a pair of eyes in the rear-view mirror through the slit of curtain leading to the front seat.
"Fascinating prospect, but you forget, dearest lady, that I am facing a major enterprise."
"We enterprise together. I will be beside you."
"It won't do. I know better than to attempt games with ladies under such circumstances. Ask any Naga medicine-man—"
"Pah! Now you are not Siegfried, but the little boy, with superstitions to hide you are afraid."
"Surely not of you, dearest lady. It's only that I had a friend who violated the rule and got his picture in all the papers."
"Oh." She gave a sigh of relief. "Also it is an Eigenheit —how do you say?—a peculiarness. You are being original. Why do you not say? And of course, you are right. That so-bad Ted Harriman! He would print the picture of his own mother robbing a tomb." She shuddered at the thought, reached over to snap up the curtain, and tapped on the panel. "We go to the Master's office."
As Finch subsided among the cushions, he noticed that the mirrored expression of Janus might be taken for one of approval.
Instead of a hideaway up three flights of stairs or a phoney private apartment, Calioster the medium had a large ground-floor office in a highly modern building, with Calioster The Master—Medium & Occultist in the foot-high letters on the plate glass. The receptionist gave Sonia a toothy smile and intoned: "The Master will see you, Miss Kirsch. Step right in."
A solid door instead of the curtain he had rather expected admitted Finch and his companion to an inner office. There was a carpet on the floor, rows of books, a table with straight-backed office chairs. Cabinets, bells and trumpets were missing; so was the impressive but meretricious-looking medium Finch had counted on. Instead, a small man with grey hair in need of trimming, clad in a wrinkled black suit, stepped up to them and murmured, almost apologetically:
"G-good afternoon, Miss K-k-kirsch." He surveyed them a moment from a pair of wall eyes. "W-won't you sit down? This is Mmm—Mr. Finch, the athletic trainer?"