COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 196
Tarbell grinned at his own cleverness.
He threw the book into the fire, face up. The flames licked up hungrily. Instantly two numerals appeared on the white oval.
43
The ultimate answer! The cure for the loss of the book!
Tarbell plunged in his hand and snatched the volume out of the grate, amid a scattering of embers. The brown cover was slightly singed, but the pages were unharmed.
Breathing a little hoarsely, he crouched on his hams and turned to Page 43.
It said, with a certain touch of naïve malice:
"That's right."
Tarbell got up, face expressionless. He picked up his empty highball glass and smashed it against the wall. That done, he went to the window and looked out unseeingly at the night.
Seven references were left.
-
Tarbell slept well enough, untroubled by dreams, and with the book under his pillow. The next morning a cold shower and black coffee steadied him for the forthcoming ordeal. He had no illusions about what was going to happen. Meg had not given up.
It was late when he arrived at the Journal. Dusty sunlight slanted into the city room. Copy boys scuttled here and there with flimsies, and, all in all, it looked like a set for any motion picture involving newspaper life. Rewrite men were busy rewriting, and glass-paneled partitions toward the back hinted at irate editors ready to send out star reporters on perilous assignments. Tim Hatton, a cameraman, was moodily shaking dice in a corner.
"Hiya, Sam," he said around a cigarette. "Roll you a couple."
MacGregor, a Denver man who had grown old in harness, lifted a bald head from his desk to leer at Tarbell. "Tim Hatton has been going to movies," he said hoarsely. "Tim Hatton has been reading all about Charlie MacArthur and Ben Hecht. Man and boy, I've been writing copy all over the country, and not even with Bonfils have I known a guy more determined to be a newspaperman. Pretty soon he'll be telling you about his hangover, Tarbell, and offering you a drink out of that pretty little silver flask on his hip. Ah, youth." MacGregor returned to his work and ate a lemon drop.
"Sourpuss," Hatton said, pink around the ears. "Why don't he quit riding me?"
"Go out and snap a murderer," MacGregor said. "Push right through a cordon of police—pardon, harness bulls, I mean—and go into the building where Public Enemy Number One is cornered. I wish motion pictures had never been invented. These so-and-so cubs who come in here, wet behind the ears, expecting to find Eddie Robinson behind the city desk."
Tarbell was glancing through a still-damp copy of the Journal, wondering if Gwinn's body had been found yet. He said absently, "Them days have gone forever, Tim."
"So you say," Hatton grunted, and peered at his wrist watch. "I've got a date with Barney Donn in half an hour. Well?"
MacGregor said in a mechanical voice, "Barney Donn, Arnie Rothstein's successor, born February 3, 1892, Chicago beer baron under Capone, served time on a Federal tax rap, biggest gambler in Florida, left Hialeah a week ago. What's he doing here?"
"That's my job to find out," Hatton said. "He's news."
Tarbell put down the paper. "I'll go along. I used to know Barney." He didn't mention that once he'd blackmailed Donn for a couple of grand, and that he was vaguely worried about the gambler's appearance in Hollywood. Had Meg anything to do with this? Donn had a long memory. It might be wise to take the bull by the horns.
MacGregor crunched a lemon drop. "Remember Rothstein," he said sardonically. Hatton cursed him casually and picked up his camera.
"Ready, Sam?"
"Yeah." Tarbell dropped the Journal. Nothing in it about Gwinn. He hesitated, wondering whether he should check up on the obit file, but decided not to risk it. He followed Hatton out of the office, past the reception clerk, and watched the cameraman settle a mangled hat on the back of his head. Smoke drifted lazily from Hatton's nostrils.
The office cat gave Tarbell 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. Tarbell 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 Tarbell," 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?"
-
Tarbell 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, Tarbell. 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 around 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 Tarbell. "We haven't played for years."
Tarbell 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. Tarbell 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 Tarbell 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," Tarbell 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."
Tarbell 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 Tarbell'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?" Tarbell's voice was strained.
Donn grinned. He nodded.
Tarbell 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," Tarbell 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 I O U'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 Tarbell 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 Tarbell thought Donn was bluffing, and called, but he was wrong. Meantime the stakes mounted. At last Tarbell got what he thought was a good hand, and raised on the strength of it.
Donn met and raised. Hatton did the same. Tarbell 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 Tarbell 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? Tarbell 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," Tarbell 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."
Tarbell 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 Tarbell.
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 Tarbell 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.
-
Tarbell 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."
"Crudity, always crudity," the anthropomorphic unicorn murmured, clasping its knee between its hands. "You're a relic of the dark ages, Belphegor."
"You're a jackass, Amduscias," said Belphegor. The three-headed spidery horror said nothing. It regarded Tarbell unwinkingly.
"Look, human," Amduscias began, squinting along its horn, "Devil to man, have you any preference?"
Tarbell croaked inarticulately. He found his voice with some difficulty.
"P-preference? About what? Where—How'd I get here?"
"Death hath a thousand something doors and they do open both ways," Amduscias quoted inaccurately.
"I'm not dead."
"No," said the demon rather reluctantly. "But you will be. You will be."
"Tooth, horn, and claw," Belphegor interjected.
"Where am I, then?"
"Oh, it's a hinterland," Amduscias said. "Bael made it specially for our rendezvous." He glanced at the silent three-headed creature. "Meg sent us. You know Meg, don't you?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I know her." Tarbell licked his lips. He remembered the book, and lifted it with unsteady hands. The number on the cover was unchanged—12.
"Sit down," Amduscias invited. "We have time for a talk before you die."
"Talk," Belphegor growled, yanking viciously at his tail. "Pah! Fool!"
The unicorn head bobbed solemnly. "I am a philosopher. There's no need to keep staring at Bael, human. He may strike you as ugly, but I assure you we're a handsome group, as Hell's lords go. If it's Bael's plurality that troubles you, you should see Asmodee. Our Eurynome—the progenitor of the bogeyman. Sit down and let's talk. It's been years since I spoke with a human being outside of Hell. And the ones in Hell can't carry on a lucid conversation," Amduscias went on ruminatively. "I used to talk with Voltaire a great deal, but since around 1850 he's done nothing but laugh. Mad, quite mad," the demon finished.
Tarbell couldn't keep his eyes off Bael. The petulant, melancholy human face regarded him fixedly. The toad face stared at the sky. The cat face looked at nothing. It wasn't Meg, though. That was something. Or was it? Tarbell's nails dug into his palms.
"What do you want?"
"You speak specifically, I assume—of now." Amduscias hunched his shoulders. "Be still, Belphegor," he added irritably. "If you had your way, this human being would be in tattered shreds within seconds. And then what? Back to Hell for us."
"What's wrong with Hell?" Belphegor demanded, tugging at his tail, as though giving himself some eerie sort of spinal adjustment. "Too crude for your cultivated tastes?" He dug a reddish clot from under a toe claw.
"Exactly. I don't like this hinterland. Bael's got the damnedest ideas for scenery."
"Result of a tripartite mind, I suppose," Amduscias said. "Well, human, how do you prefer to be killed?"
"I don't," Tarbell denied.
Belphegor grunted. "Stop fooling around. Meg told us to get rid of this human. Let's get it over and go back home."
-
"W-wait a minute," Tarbell interrupted then. "Can't we straighten this out somehow?" The feel of the book in his hand gave him an unreasonable confidence. "Meg's only a familiar. What right has she got to tell you what to do?"
"Courtesies of the trade," Amduscias explained. "Now tell us how you'd prefer to be killed."
"If you had your way," Belphegor said bitterly, "you'd talk him to death."
The other rubbed his horn. "It's an intellectual amusement. I don't pretend to be another Scheherazade, but there are ways of driving humans to insanity through ... um ... conversation. Yes, I vote for that method."
"My master, how you do run on!" Belphegor exclaimed. "All right, I vote for ripping him apart, cell by cell." His broad gray mouth twitched slightly.
Amduscias nodded and glanced at Bael. "How would you like to dispose of the human?"
Bael said nothing, but began to crawl purposefully toward Tarbell, who drew back. Amduscias waved a deprecatory hand.
"Very well. We're in disagreement. Shall we snatch the human off to Hell and give him to Astoreth or Agaliarept? Or, perhaps, we could leave him here. There's no way out of this hinterland, except through Bael."
Tarbell tried to speak, and discovered that his throat was dry. "Hold on," he croaked. "I ... I've got something to say about this, haven't I?"
"Very little. Why?"
