The Carnelian Cube

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?"

Finch nodded. Said Sonia: "Oh, Master, you shall teach him to find the communion of souls."

The mouth was rather ineffective. This was certainly not the man with the carnelian cube. Finch said: "Yes, but for this visit, I'm specially interested in discovering a man I have reason to believe is living within a few hundred miles of here. I don't know what name he's going by, but—" and he repeated the description of Terry-Tiridat. "You mediums must get to know so many people."

Calioster the Master scratched an eyebrow. "And— uh—you—uh want to know—"

"Where he is, of course. What name he uses."

"Ummm. I'm afraid it's r-rather a matter for a detective, isn't it. Besides I'm a bit short-handed right nnnow—"

"That isn't all," said Finch. "He has something that belongs to me—a little cube of red carnelian, about so big, with an inscription in Etruscan on it. I'd like to be sure where it is."

Sonia's foot tapped slightly, but the medium's face lit up. "Oh, in that case, I think w-w-we can perhaps materialize-—"

"Alexander the Great or St. Paul?"

The medium showed no sign of resentment. "Oh, dear me, no!" he said. "Eminent gug—ghosts like that are very hard to get. I really can't. I could raise you Geoffrey Plantagenet—the one who gug—got his brains trodden out in a tut-tournament—but I wouldn't advise it. It gug-gives me such frightful headaches that I'm obligated to stop work for several days and charge a straight thousand dollars, and he doesn't speak anything but early Middle English and twelfth-century French. I had in mind my old fff-friend Ganowoges."

"Oh, an Indian," said Finch. "Chief, I suppose."

Dr. Calioster looked distressed. "No, though he likes to pretend he is. Really, Mmmmm-Mmmmm—Mr. Ffffinch, I'm afraid we had better not continue if you doubt my sin-sin-sincerity—"

Finch waved. "Not at all, I assure you. I just want some evidence. It's an idiosyncrasy of mine."

Sonia cut in. "Master, you must forgive. He is so veree eccentric, this Arthur. It is for that I lof him. He also has the superstitions."

"I bub-beg pardon, Mr. Finch," said the Master, in a mollified tone. "I imagined you were mmmerely skeptical, not being original."

He took a place at the head of the table and indicated a chair for each of the others, then without any movement to put out the lights, drew a Bible from a drawer.

"I shall take the text from Ecclesiastes," he said, and fluttered the leaves, then read: " 'Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return.' Let us pray for the simple faith of our fathers."

He extended a hand to each of them, lowered his head and mumbled, like a man unaccustomed to saying grace who has been asked to minister at the Thanksgiving dinner of a pious aunt.

Finch watched him closely to catch the inevitable trick—and almost jerked away the other hand that had rested on the table. It touched flesh—cold flesh. His breath caught; he turned his head in time to see in the empty place, a human figure solidifying with the whirling motion of curdled milk stirred in coffee, one second a translucent shadow, the next a solid and almost too palpable man. The grip on his hand had the clammy cold of a fish on ice, but Finch stared with more interest than fear at a lean redskin, naked to the scalp-lock that towered over his cranium like a Greek helmet.

The apparition's mouth moved. It pursed its lips and deposited a brown blob of tobacco-juice on the rug. "Hi, toots! You here again?" the lips said to Sonia. "Look the other way, kid, unless you want to get an education." The ghost swung a bony pentagonal face on Finch. "Who the hell are you, mister?"

"Why should she look the other way?" said Finch, ignoring the second question.

" 'Cause I gotta put my pants on, that's why. I can't do it sitting down. See?"

The chilly grasp relaxed from Finch's, a drawer was opened and the Indian grunted.

"Okay, you can look," said Ganowoges. "To-gus. Chief Stink-water, that's me, and what do you want?"

Finch surveyed a figure in breech-clout and buckskin leggings, standing with feet well spread. "Is that what 'Ganowoges' means?" he asked, to establish relations.

"Sure. Onondaga. If you laugh at it I'll break your —ing neck." Finch felt himself flushing at the use of the Ultimate Unprintable and did not even look at Sonia. "They named a town after me up in York State."

"Please, Gug-Ganowoges, can't you be businesslike today?" asked the medium.

"Hell, no!" said the ghost, bringing his lean fist down on the table with a sound that had nothing of the immaterial. "Listen, Claude; I come around here and answer sappy questions for dopes because I want to get a little life, see? And I stick to you 'cause you're the only medium I ever saw with enough rapport to materialize me good and hard. So we think alike, see? Businesslike, balls! If you want a more businesslike spirit, be more businesslike yourself, and you can materialize one of those Baptist preachers we got on the other side. They're businesslike as all hell ... Gimme a cigarette, somebody."

Finch furnished both the cigarette and a match, remarking: "May I offer my apologies and present my sappy question?"

"Okay, doc. You paid for it. Chief Stink-water listening—"

"I'm trying to locate a man who should be living somewhere near here, named Terry Armstrong or—"

"Say, Claude," interrupted Ganowoges, "know who I saw yesterday. Remember that wop that used to get himself materialized into old Ma Perkins' seances in a bed-sheet, pretending he was Julius Caesar. You know—'Da die is-a-casta!' Well—"

Finch cleared his throat in a marked manner, and as this produced no effect but a glower from the redskin, addressed himself to Dr. Calioster: "Would it be in order to suggest a deduction from your fee for time spent in spiritual reminiscences which are doubtless of interest to you, but very little to us?"

Calioster and Sonia spoke at once. "You s-ss-see—" and, "Ask him how we must achieve communion—" but Ganowoges cut across both of them: " 'Scuse me, doc. Cut my throat if you want to. Go on with your bellyache."

"Well this man I'm looking for should be tall and thin, about six feet one, weighing maybe a hundred and sixty—"

"Say!" The raucous voice cut in again. "How'd you make out with that blonde doll, Claude, the one you had in here treating for soul-pains after her husband ran out with the bearded woman in the circus? You was certainly doing all right when I de-materialized, he, he, he." Ganowoges gave an indescribably lecherous twist to his mouth. "I made her a proposition myself while you were getting rid of the girl outside, but she turned me down on account of having a low body temperature. Maybe she'll come through, now it's hot weather."

"Please, Gug-gug-gug-Ganowoges!" implored the medium, with his hands making a slight wringing motion. He turned from Sonia to Finch and back: "I assure you I ddddon't know—"

"Aw, keep your drawers on, Claude," said the Indian. "You know I'm a spirit and don't count. Sue me if I'm wrong. Say, Toots," he addressed Sonia. "How's about you? Ain't that Colonel of yours running down? Or have you got a new boy-friend?" A pair of fingers reached out toward her cheek. She dodged them expertly, but her expression of displeasure was less pronounced than Finch would have liked. "All right, all right, what's your question, doc?"

"I'm looking for a man and I'm not sure of his name. He has high cheek-bones and a long nose—"

"Week!" shrieked Sonia. "Peeg!" She swung a vigorous slap below the level of the table. Finch beard it connect and Ganowoges straightened up with a burst of laughter. "Haw, haw! Say, doc, I'm sorry, but with a wren like this around I just can't keep my mind on business. How's about a few hands of stud?"

"I really need this information," protested Finch.

Calioster sighed. "I'm afraid we had bub-better play with him. When he has these moods, it's impossible to do anything else, and it only jeopardizes m-my whole business to try. I'm very sorry."

Ganowoges leered as the medium extracted a pack of cards and a box of chips from the book-case, and Finch accepted an allotment. Sonia dealt: "The king, he bet," she pronounced.

Finch reflected that the lady knew her stud as Ganowoges tossed in a chip, remarking: "That's me, old stinky himself. Say, did you ever hear the one about the old maid and the tramp with the wooden leg?"

"Yes!" said Sonia and Calioster in unison, and the latter dealt another card.

"I check. The doc here ain't heard it, anyway, and it'll do him good. It seems there was—"

Finch felt himself flushing again under the impact of the more-than-Rabelasian anecdote. Calioster merely looked dogged and hiked a pot which the Indian presently gathered in, while Sonia looked sympathetically at the Master from large, liquid eyes.

The deal changed; Calioster won a pot, Finch won, and then the Indian again, the process accompanied by a flow of bawdy stories, gossip and profanity from the garrulous ghost, whose skill at the game did not seem in the least hampered by the activity of his tongue. He won steadily, mostly from Finch, who cursed himself for not resisting, but still could not resist, the temptation to call. The payoff came on a hand when Finch had been dealt aces back to back, with three diamonds to match the exposed ace. Ganowoges had a pair of jacks showing, and Finch, with as good a simulation of a man running a bluff as he could put on, piled in the rest of his chips. The Indian called, whooped with laughter as he turned over a third jack, and stood up.

"That's all today," he said. "You birds are too —ing easy. Why don't you bring around some real sharpies some time, Claude? I'm going on the town the next time you materialize me, only it's a damn shame that in my state the old fire-water don't do no good. Wooo-ooo-ooo!" Ganowoges gave a shrill yell, slapping his open mouth to make the loon-cry, and vanished. Breech-clout and leggings fell to the floor in a heap.

Finch stood up also and bowed to Dr. Calioster. "The demonstration of your powers," he said, "was completely convincing, even if the result -left something to be desired."

"Really, MMMM-Mr. Finch, I mmmmust apologize," said the little medium, with an expression of complete misery. "Ganowoges is never gentlemanly, but I have never seen him quite so bub-bad. I'm afraid it was the question. None of them like to give answers in the mm-mmaterial plane, you know. If it had bub-been what Miss Kisch wanted ... But he's really the only one with whom I hate a strong enough rapport to put on such a task."

" 'Never gentlemanly,' ranks with the second verse of the fourth chapter of Matthew as a masterpiece of understatement," said Finch, good-naturedly, reaching for his wallet. "Oh, damn! I'm afraid your Amerind friend has picked me as clean as Arion. Can you wait till Friday for your fee?"

"MMmmy dear sir! I wouldn't dud-dream of accepting your mmmoney. The experience was of no value to you. In fact, I insist you really mmmust take back the money you lost. I'll take care of Ganowoges."

"Oh, come, really," said Finch, "that's—"

"I bub-bub-beg you! My professional good name is at stake." The Master wrung his hands in an agony of apology and self-abasement. "Here—" he pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote on it. "Here is the address of another gentleman who c-can serve you, I'm sure. Dr. Joseph Dunninger of 4307 Grand Boulevard, St. Louis. A pseudonym, of course: his real name is Carteret-Jones. He has a mmmost remarkable series of rapports, especially among those who were in the cue-criminal classes in life, and I know he'll be able to find one to sssteal the sstone for you."

As they got into the lavender limousine at the door, Sonia dabbed at her eyes just enough to prevent a pair of tears from furrowing through her makeup.

"Pardon," she said. "I mus' weep for the poor Master. Always people are asking him to make a ghost to steal the papers or to frighten, but he is so gentle, he can have rapports only with spirits of love."

Yes, just like Ganowoges, thought Finch; and then remembered he had had no opportunity to say anything either to Sonia or Dr. Calioster about wishing to obtain possession of the carnelian cube, and certainly had not had time to mention it to the uninhibited Ganowoges. It occurred to him to wonder, as Sonia threw her arms around him, how the Doctor had known that he wanted to "steal the stone."