Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

“Think nothing of it.”

“I do think something of it, Ma‘am, and I appreciate what you gave when we carried your bags up, too. Ma’am—maybe I shouldn’t say it, but I know something, something confidential, that maybe I ought to tell you about.”

“Then tell me,” the witch said. She had speared a section of mandarin orange, and she punctuated the words by thrusting it into her mouth.

“It’s confidential.” The third bellman looked around at Stubb, Sandy, Candy, and Barnes. “Maybe you could step into the hall with me for just a moment?”

Barnes said, “You don’t have to do that, Madame Serpentina. We’ll go outside if you want us to.”

Stubb’s smile was wide and nearly genuine. “What is this? Aren’t we all friends here? Listen, if the lady’s in some sort of little embarrassment, I want to know about it so we can help her out.”

“I’m not sure it is her,” the bellman admitted. “I just thought she ought to be told.”

“Enough of mysteries,” the witch said. “I wish to eat my fruit and drink my wine in peace—or at least, in as much as I may have. If you are not even certain I am concerned, out with it. Or let it be, and out with you.”

“Maybe it’s another one of you,” the bellman said. “Or all of you. But you’ve been staked out by the authorities.”

“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.”