“Do you mean to say, Hawksquill,” said a third, more reasonably, “that Russell Eigenblick supposes himself to be this resurrected Emperor, and that…”
“I have no idea who he supposes himself to be,” Hawksquill said. “I’m only telling you who he in fact is.”
“Then answer me this,” said the member, raising his hand to silence the hubbub Hawksquill’s insistence raised. “Why is it just now that he returns? I mean didn’t you say that these heroes return at the time of their people’s greatest need, and so on?”
“Traditionally they are said to, yes.”
“Then why now? If this futile Empire has lain doggo for so long…”
Hawksquill looked down. “I said it would be hard for me to make a recommendation. I’m afraid that there are essential pieces of this puzzle still withheld from me.”
“Such as.”
“For one,” she said, “the cards he speaks of. I can’t now go into my reasons, but I must see them, and manipulate them…” There was an impatient uncrossing and recrossing of legs. Someone asked why. “I supposed,” she said, “you would need to know his strength. His chances. What times he considers propitious. The point is, gentlemen, that if you intend to suppress him, you had better know whether Time is on your side, or on his; and whether you are not futilely ranging yourselves against the inevitable.”
“And you can’t tell us.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. Yet.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the senior member present, rising. “I’m afraid, Hawksquill, that, your investigations in this case being so prolonged, we’ve had to come to a decision ourselves. We came tonight chiefly to discharge you of any further obligation.”
“Hm,” said Hawksquill.
The senior member chuckled indulgently. “And it doesn’t really seem to me,” he said, “that your present revelations do much to alter the case. As I remember my history, the Holy Roman Empire had not a lot to do with the life of the peoples who supposedly comprised it. Am I right? The real rulers liked having the Imperial power in their hands or under their control, but in any case did what they liked.”
“That was often so.”
“Well then. The course we decided on was the right one. If Russell Eigenblick turns out to be in some sense this Emperor, or convinces enough people of it (I notice, by the way, he continually puts off announcing just who he is, big mystery), then he might be more useful than the reverse.”
“May I ask,” Hawksquill said, motioning forward the Maid of Stone who stood mumchance in the doorway with a tray of glasses and a tall decanter, “what course of action you decided on?”
The Noisy Bridge Rod and Gun Club settled back in their seats, smiling. “Co-optation,” said a member—one of those who had most vigorously protested Hawksquill’s conclusions. “The power of certain charlatans,” he went on, “isn’t to be despised. We learned that in last summer’s marches and riots. The Church of All Streets fracas. Et cetera. Of course such power is usually short-lived. It’s not real power. All wind, really: A storm soon passed. They know it, too…”
“But,” said another member, “when such a one is introduced to
“Then he can be enlisted. He can be used, frankly.”
“You see,” said the senior member, waving away the drink-tray offered him, “in the large scheme, Russell Eigenblick has no real powers, no strong adherents. A few clowns in colored shirts, a few devoted men. His oratory moves; but who remembers next day? If he stirred up great hatreds, or mobilized old bitternesses—but he doesn’t. It’s all vagueness. So: we’ll offer him real allies. He has none. He’ll accept. There are lures we have. He’ll be ours. And damn useful he might prove, too.”
“Hm,” Hawksquill said again. Schooled as she had been in the purest of studies, on the highest of planes, she had never found deception and evasion easy. That Russell Eigenblick had no allies was, anyway, true. That he was a cat’s-paw for forces more powerful, less namable, more insidious than the Noisy Bridge Rod and Gun Club could imagine, she ought by rights to inform them: though she herself could not yet name those forces. But she had been released from the case. They wouldn’t anyway—she could see it in their smug faces—probably listen to her. Still she blushed, fiercely, at what she withheld from them, and said, “I think I’ll have a drop of this. Will no one join me?”
“The fee,” said a member, watching her closely as she poured for him, “need not be returned, of course.”
She nodded at him. “When exactly do you put your plan into execution?”
“This day next week,” said the senior member, “we have a meeting with him in his hotel.” He rose, looking around him, ready to go. Those members who had accepted drinks swallowed them hastily. “I’m sorry,” the senior member said, “that after all your labors we’ve gone our own way.”
“It’s no doubt just as well,” Hawksquill said, not rising.
They looked at each other—all standing now—in that unconvincing manner, this time expressing thoughtful doubt or doubtful thought, and took a muted leave of her. One hoped aloud as they went out that she had not been offended; and the others, as they inserted themselves into their cars, pondered that possibility, and what it might mean for them.
Hawksquill, alone, pondered it too.
Released from her obligation to the Club, she was a free agent. If a new old Empire were rearising in the world, she couldn’t but think it would give her new and wider scope for her powers. Hawksquill was not immune to the lure of power; great wizards rarely are.
And yet no New Age was at hand. Whatever powers stood behind Russell Eigenblick might not, in the end, be as strong as the powers the Club could bring against them.
Whose side then, supposing she could determine which side was which, would she be on?
She watched the legs her brandy made on the sides of the glass. A week from today… She rang for the Maid of Stone, ordered coffee, and readied herself for a long night’s work: they were too few now to spend one asleep.
A Secret Sorrow
Exhausted by fruitless labor, she came down some time after dawn and went out into the bird-loud street.
Opposite her tall and narrow house was a small park which had once been public but which was now sternly locked; only the residents of those houses and private clubs which faced on it, viewing it with calm possessiveness, had keys to the wrought-iron gates. Hawksquill had one. The park, too chock-full of statues, fountains, birdbaths and such fancies, rarely refreshed her, since she had more than once used it as a sort of notepad, sketching quickly on its sunwise perimeter a Chinese dynasty or a Hermetic mathesis, none of which (of course) she was now able to forget.
But now in the misty dawn on the first day of May it was obscure, vague, not rigorous. It was air mostly, almost not a City air, sweet and rich with the exhalation of newborn leaves; and obscurity and vagueness were just what she required now.
As she came up to the gate she used, she saw that someone was standing before it, gripping the bars and staring within hopelessly, obverse of a jailed man. She hesitated. Walkers-abroad at this hour were of two kinds: humdrum hard workers up early, and the unpredictable and the lost who had been up all night. Those seemed to be pajama bottoms protruding from beneath this one’s long overcoat, but Hawksquill didn’t take this to mean that he was an early riser. She chose a grand-lady manner as best suited to the encounter and, taking out her key, asked the man to excuse her, she’d like to open the gate.
“About time too,” he said.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said; he had stood aside only slightly, expectantly, and she saw that he intended to follow her in. “It’s a private park. I’m afraid you can’t come in. It’s only for those who live around it, you see. Who
