by Mike Ashley
“The senator asked for you,” I told him. “I guess he doesn’t read the magazines.”
“Peter!” Melisa said reproachfully.
Stryk smiled unperturbedly and his shoulders moved. Perhaps he was suppressing a laugh.
“Sorry,” I said. “We probably would have called you in anyway. You know that. What does this Janif fellow have against you anyway?”
“If you ever meet Dr Janif,” Stryk said, “do not shake his hand. If you must do so, count your fingers afterward and wash immediately with a strong disinfectant soap. He exudes a venomous pus.”
“Well,” I said. “I take it you’re not friends, then?”
“He discovered his Power early,” Stryk said grimly. “It is the ability to make certain insects march in rows. He opened a cockroach circus, but it was not a great success.”
“You’re joking!” I said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Now let us see what we can do to help Senator Langford. He should be arriving around four this afternoon. We’d best get to the hotel well before then. Give me twenty minutes to glance into the great crystal to see what I can make of what Melisa has seen, and then we’d best be off.”
“I’ll use the time to change,” Melisa said, and darted off.
It was no more than twenty minutes later when we three left the house and leapt aboard one of the ubiquitous double-decker cable cars heading downtown on California Street. Stryk was in an unusually sombre mood and would not discuss what he had seen in the crystal, if anything. He was wearing what he calls his “gentleman’s disguise”: a light pink double-breasted wool suit with a wide foulard cravat, carrying a dark dragonskin briefcase holding an assortment of those items that no magician leaves home without. He might have been a banker or a diplomat.
Melisa was dressed in a dark blue schoolgirl skirt and jacket with a ruffled white blouse and black shoes. Her white hair had somehow turned dark brown, as it did when she wished to remain unnoticed. Whether by magical artifact, or some powder or liquid I know not, but within five minutes of returning home it would be white again.
When we arrived at the St Barnabas, Stryk and Melisa went off by themselves to inspect whatever aspects of the hotel that sorcerers would choose to inspect. I awaited them in the Webster Tea Room, an ornate gilded and mirrored Victorian chamber that had actually once hosted President Daniel Webster. I believe that most of the mirrors were replaced after the big quake, but the rest of the furnishings were original. It was easy to lose track of time in a room like this, which was essentially timeless. I imagined women in narrow-waisted gowns coming through the door accompanied by men in black tie and tails, talking in hushed tones about the Rebs firing on Fort Sumter, or burning New York, or the balloon assault on Atlanta, and ordering rum punch or brandy and hot water.
Stryk and Melisa joined me after about half an hour and I told them of my fancy, and Stryk stroked his short beard thoughtfully. “Time travel utilizing the Law of Similarity,” he said. “An interesting notion.”
“It was just a random thought,” I said.
Stryk patted me on the back and pulled up his chair. “You must learn to cultivate such thoughts,” he said. “One such thought could make you immortal.”
The waiter came over. I ordered a scotch and spring water, Stryk ordered coffee, and Melisa requested a buttered scone and lemonade. They still call it a tea room, but only visiting Canadians drink tea.
“Turmoil!” Melisa said suddenly.
We looked at her. “What?” asked Stryk.
“Turmoil.” She made an indefinite gesture with her hand. “Somewhere around us. It is like a piercing yellow light in my mind.”
“Directed at us?” Stryk asked.
Melissa closed her eyes for a moment. “No,” she said finally.
“Then let us await events,” said Stryk.
“Speaking of awaiting events, what shall we do to prepare for the senator?” I asked Stryk.
“What is being done?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “We’re permitted to guard him but not to otherwise interfere. At the senator’s request. He’s afraid that our ‘heavy-handed approach’ will endanger his child’s life.”
The bitterness must have shown in my voice, for Stryk looked at me sharply. “Accept what is,” he advised me, “and don’t carry what was around on your shoulders.”
“Is that some of your sorcerers’ philosophy?” I asked him sarcastically.
“It’s a quote from ‘The Wisdom of Yi,’ ” he said.
“Who’s Yi?” I asked.
“Ah! That’s the question.” Stryk explained.
A sombre looking man in a dark red double-breasted suit trotted into the room and looked around. He whispered something to the headwaiter, who pointed to our table. A few seconds later he was standing there, looming politely over us. “Inspector Frey?” he asked cautiously, looking from Stryk to me.
I nodded. “I am he. What can I do for you?”
“My name is Pierson. I am the manager of the St Barnabas.” He leaned forward so that he could lower his voice. “We’ve had an, er, incident on the third floor. If you wouldn’t mind coming with me—”
“What sort of incident?” I asked.
“Well—” he hesitated and lowered his voice even more. “A murder,” he whispered.
“That is an incident,” I admitted. “Have you called the police?”
“You are the police,” Pierson said.
I made an annoyed gesture with my hand. “The local precinct,” I said. “It’ll be their case. To start with, anyway. Send them a citygram.”
“The city telegraph isn’t working at the moment. I sent a boy to the precinct station,” Pierson said. “I didn’t want to go yelling on the street for the nearest copper. What would the guests think?”
“I understand,” I said. “Bad for business, a murder in the hotel.”
“Indeed,” he agreed. “Particularly a mysterious killing with no apparent explanation.”
“Really?” I said. “How so?”
“He was a guest,” Pierson said. “Named, ah—” He took a card from his breast pocket and consulted it. “Lundt.” He spelled it. “Paul Lundt. From Chicago. Our floor man heard the sound of a shot from inside his room and went to investigate. The door was locked from the inside. After calling and receiving no answer, he sent for the security officer, who broke it in. Mr Lundt was on the bed – dead. There was no one else in the room. I searched the room myself, and no one was concealed anywhere. And I’ve left our security man at the door to make sure nothing is disturbed.”
I swivelled around to stare up at the plump hotel manager. “Don’t tell me,” I said. “There’s no other exit from the room.”
“I do tell you that,” Pierson said. “There is no other door and the window opens on a three-storey drop to the service yard in back of the hotel.”
I sighed and got up. “It sounds like it’s going to become my case anyway.” I turned to Stryk and Melisa. “If you wouldn’t mind assisting . . .”
“Not at all,” Stryk assured me, rising.
Melisa floated to her feet. “Murder,” she said. “Turmoil.”
“Probably,” Stryk agreed.
I explained briefly to Pierson who Stryk and Melisa were, and that I would require their assistance, and we headed for the elevator.
“Who does your protective spells?” Stryk asked as the elevator boy lurched us toward the third floor.
“The WCHMORC,” Pierson said.
“Efficient and reasonably priced,” Stryk said. “ ‘The West Coast Holy and Mystical Order of the Rosy Cross’ – the local Rosicrucian guild. They stand behind their product.”
Pierson nodded. “We were using the Associated Theosophists,” he said. “But they make such a big deal about everything.”
The third floor corridor was deserted except for a large man in a white suit and Panama hat who was lounging against the frame of the open door to room 312. A cigar jutted from his mouth and he w
ore an air of stolid disdain for the world around him, and especially the corpse in the room behind him.
“Gores,” I said.
The big man took the cigar from his mouth. “Frey,” he answered. “You got here fast.”
“I was here,” I told him. “Let’s take a look.”
“Stryk,” he said, looking behind me. “Melisa.” He jammed the cigar back in his mouth. “You must have been having a convention.”
“You touch anything?” I asked him, looking into the room.
“Only the door,” he told me. “I kicked it in.”
As the house detective, or as the hotel liked to call him, the Director of Security Services, Gores would be one of the few people unaffected by the protective spell on the door. It was all a matter of intent. Most people trying to break into a hotel room would have felt increasingly dizzy or nauseate, and would have collapsed before they succeeded. The spell somehow recognized that Gores was supposed to be there. Don’t ask me how an inanimate weaving of forces can recognize anything; that’s how it’s been described to me, and there you have it.
Pierson peered into the room and hiccuped nervously at the sight of the corpse. “Well, I’ll just leave you gentlemen to your work,” he said, and headed back toward the elevator.
The corpse, a well-groomed white male about 35 years old, was slumped over the edge of the bed in his shirt sleeves, with his cravat untied and hanging loosely around his neck. He may have been leaning over the open suitcase that was beside him on the bed. His suit jacket was hung neatly over a chair by the bed. There was a bloody hole in the collar of his white shirt, right below the throat, and the suitcase as well as the area around him on the bed and the floor were all basted in blood. The protective spell seemed to have been disrupted by the broken door, since I felt scarcely a twinge of nausea as I entered the room. I was careful not to touch anything myself, and squatted by the body. “Locked from the inside, eh?” I asked Gores.
“Bolt thrown,” he said. “See for yourself.” He indicated the splintered wood and bits of lock still clinging to the door and the bits of lock mechanism and shards of wood on the floor around the door.
“Maybe we’d better do a reconstruction,” I said, “just for the record.”
Gores snorted. “Please yourself,” he said. “But I know when a door’s locked, and when it’s not locked.”
“Nonetheless . . .”
Melisa had come into the room, and was probing the air with outstretched fingers, her eyes closed. “Funny,” she said, “I find no residue of malice or fear in the room.”
“So somebody without malice shot him,” I ventured. “Maybe a professional hit man. And he was caught by surprise – no time to feel fear.”
Stryk quickly set up the tools of his trade: a small charcoal brazier on a tripod, a leather case containing a double row of glass phials filled with a variety of those things that sorcerers fill their glass phials with, and a wand, thick around as a roll of quarters at the base and tapering to a point about a foot and a half out; like a fat midget pool cue. He poured a little liquid into the charcoal and lit it with a gesture.
Gores backed away from the doorway. Never meddle in the affairs of wizards, as the old saw has it. Particularly when they’re playing with fire.
Stryk took a small leather-bound book from his briefcase and looked through it thoughtfully. Finding the page he wanted, he ripped it out with exaggerated care, folded it into quarters, and fed it to the fire. A puff of black smoke emerged from the brazier, and turned bright green as it rose. Stryk traced a figure in the smoke with his wand and then touched the tip to the spot on the door where the lock had been torn away.
Splinters of wood on the door frame vibrated. Fragments of wood on the floor stirred and jiggled. Then, slowly and deliberately, all the pieces that had been part of the door lock and frame rose, crept, twisted, slid, or flew back into place, and the door that had been emerged from the wreck of the door that was.
I went over to inspect it when the smoke had cleared. The bolt was clearly thrown, jutting out like a tongue from the face of the lock. “It was thus?” I asked Stryk.
“I affirm it,” he replied, putting a brass cap over the fire on the brazier.
“Well, that’s settled,” I said. “We do have a ‘locked room’ mystery here.”
“Damn!” Gores said, inspecting the newly-restored lock. “The door is fixed now, is it?”
“No,” Stryk told him. “The attraction is temporary. It should go back to the way it was in a few hours.”
Gores shook his head. “Damn!” he said again.
“In the context, perhaps not a good expression,” Stryk said. He straightened up and came over to the bed. “May I?” he asked, gesturing toward the corpse.
“Please,” I said.
He stooped over the corpse and made poking and prodding motions with his hand and wand, although he never actually touched the body. “Hmmm,” he said. “Haaa,” he said.
He took what looked like a bit of crystal on the end of a string and held it by the string end at various places around the body. In some spots the crystal went in a circle, in some it swung back and forth, and in one spot it tugged at the string as though it would get away and go off on its own. “So,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“Shot,” he said.
“I knew that,” I told him.
“Better to be sure,” he said. “Lead slug entered the body right below the neck and fragmented. Bits and pieces of it are scattered from his stomach to his brain. Nasty.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Look,” he said, pointing down toward the open suitcase.
I went over and peered down. The suitcase was empty, and the bottom and sides were black and charred. It looked as though the insides had been burned out, and the contents, whatever they had been, were now crumbling bits of carbon and ash. “Damn!” I said.
Stryk shook his head. “Please,” he said. “There are – beings – that might be close to us even now that might take that term seriously.”
“Yes,” I agreed, resisting the impulse to duck my head under my arm and recite a protection spell. “Are you saying,” I whispered hoarsely, “that it was a demonic fire that burned out the inside of this case?”
“Notice,” Stryk said, “that the bed under the suitcase isn’t even singed. How would you account for that?”
“The so-called ‘cold fire’ of teleportation,” I suggested. “It leaves a residue like that, I believe.”
“And what would you say was teleported?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t,” I said. “That’s where you and Melisa come in.”
Stryk went slowly around the room, poking into this and that; Melisa stood in one corner of the room with her eyes closed, palping the air with her slender fingers; I searched the dead man’s pockets, removing everything I found and making a pile of his effects on the top of the desk across from the bed.
There was some small change; a ticket stub to a Chicago Hurlers baseball game dated last Saturday; a clasp knife with two blades, one dull and the other duller; an ivory toothpick in a leather case, a small phial of water with a sticker on it saying it had been blessed by Bishop Langeurt of the Cicero Old Rite Order of the Druid Assembly of North America; a wallet that didn’t want to open, and three keys on a gold key ring in the shape of a pyramid. On each of the four faces of the pyramid was a single letter from some alphabet I was unfamiliar with.
“Can either of you identify this?” I asked, holding up the pyramid.
Melisa opened her eyes and focused on the little object. “Seekers of the True Mu,” she said. “The four sides have four letters from the Muvian alphabet: Akka, Pokka, Tikka and Hum. They stand for Inner Growth, Harmony, a large black beetle, and Universal Awareness.”
“Beetle?” I asked.
“The beetle stands for—”
“Never mind,” I said. “Is there anything about these Seekers I should know?”
&n
bsp; “There’s one born every minute,” Stryk said from the window, which he had pulled open and out of which he was peering.
“Is this some bizarre coincidence,” asked a gravelly voice from the doorway,” or does it concern us?”
A skinny, bald guy named Godfrey, who happened to be the Chief of Detectives for the City of San Francisco, was standing there, hands on his waist, glaring into the room.
“Ask not for whom the bell tolls,” Stryk intoned, bringing his head back inside the window and pulling it closed.
“Chief,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“Senator Langford is due any minute now,” Godfrey said. “I came along to make sure that he was properly received; station some men in appropriate places; see what you and your magical, mystical friends there had planned to do. And I’m greeted by the news that there’s a stiff on the third floor.”
“That’s funny, you know,” Stryk said thoughtfully.
“There’s nothing funny about a murder,” Godfrey said. “Even if the corpse is from Chicago.”
“Not that,” Stryk said. “The senator didn’t ask you to keep your men away, or at least out of sight?”
“Nothing like that,” Chief Godfrey told him.
“Then the kidnapper doesn’t seem to care if the whole San Francisco Police Force is out trying to stop him. He seems awfully sure of himself.”
“Now that you mention it . . .” Godfrey said.
Stryk stuck his wand in his belt. “Let’s go downstairs,” he said,” I think we’re done here.”
“Giving up on solving the locked-room mystery already?” Godfrey asked Stryk, but he was looking at me. Chief Godfrey didn’t believe in this new-fangled business of hiring forensic magicians to investigate a crime scene. Oh, sure they could measure this and conjure that, and tell you that the murderer had white shoes and a brown moustache, but it took that good old-fashioned police sense to actually solve a crime. Or so he had insisted to me several times.
“Oh, no,” Stryk answered, pausing in packing up his apparatus. “I know how it was done; clever, but fairly obvious. As a matter of fact, I wonder – ” he shook his head. “But we have to discover the who and the why. I think the ‘why’ will give us the ‘who.’ But the answer isn’t in this room.”