Little, Big

Not a Moment Too Soon

All along the road north she had planned how she might present herself to the heirs of Violet Drinkwater in such a way—as antiquarian, collector, cultist—that the cards would be shown her. But if she had not herself been predicted in them (Sophie knew her at once, or recognized her very quickly) they would certainly not have been yielded up to her at all. That she proved to he as well a tenuous cousin of Violet Bramble’s descendants had helped too, a coincidence that surprised and delighted that strange family as much as it interested Hawksquill. And even so days went by as she and Sophie pored over the cards. More days she spent with the last edition of The Architecture of Country Houses, whose peculiar contents none of them seemed to be very familiar with; and though, as she studied and pored, the whole story—or as much of it as had so far happened—gradually came clear under her cockatoo scrutiny, still all the while the Noisy Bridge Rod and Gun Club advanced toward the fateful meeting with Russell Eigenblick, and still Hawksquill’s loyalties remained unplaced, and her path obscure.

It was obscure no more. The children of the children of Time: who would have thought? A Fool, and a Cousin; a Journey, and a Host. The Least Trumps! She smiled grimly, circling around the mammoth Empire Hotel in which Eigenblick had installed himself, and decided on a charm, a thing she rarely resorted to.

She inserted the Vulpes into the cavernous parking garage beneath the hotel. Armed guards and attendants patrolled the doors and elevators. She found herself in a line of vehicles being checked and examined. She stilled the car’s growl, and took a Morocco-leather envelope from the glove-box. From this she extracted a small white fragment of bone. It was a bone taken from a pure black cat which had been boiled alive in the tenement kitchen of La Negra, an espiritista for whom Hawksquill had once had occasion to do a great favor. It might have been a toebone, or part of the maxillary process; certainly La Negra didn’t know; she’d hit on it only after a whole day’s experimenting before a mirror, separating the bones carefully from the stinking carcass and putting each in turn into her mouth, searching for the one that would make her image in the mirror disappear. It was this one. Hawksquill found the processes of witchcraft vulgar and the cruelty of this one especially repellent; she wasn’t herself convinced that there was one bone among the thousand-odd bones in a pure black cat that could make one invisible, but La Negra had assured her that the bone would work whether she believed it or didn’t; and she was glad to have the gift just now. She looked around her; the attendants had not yet noticed her car; she left the keys in the lock, thoughtfully; put the little bone into her mouth with a grimace of disgust, and disappeared.

Extracting herself unnoticed from the car took some doing, but the attendants and guards paid no attention to the elevator doors opening and closing on no one (who could predict the vagaries of empty elevators?) and Hawksquill walked out into the lobby, going carefully in the company of the visible so as not to brush against them. The usual unsmiling raincoated men stood at intervals along the walls or sat in lobby armchairs behind dummy newspapers, fooling no one, being fooled by no one but she. At an unseen signal, they began to change their stations just then, like pieces on a board. A large party was coming through the swift-bladed revolving doors, preceded by underlings. Not a moment too soon, Hawksquill thought, for this was the Noisy Bridge Rod and Gun Club proceeding into the lobby. They didn’t gaze around themselves inquiringly as ordinary men might on entering such a place, but, spreading out slightly as though more fully to take possession here, they kept their eyes ahead, seeing the future and not the transitory forms of the present. Under each arm was the glove-soft case, on each head the potent homburg long ridiculous on any but men like these.

They sorted themselves into two elevators, those with the highest standing holding the doors for the others, as ancient male ritual dictates; Hawksquill slipped into the less crowded one.

“The thirteenth?”

“The thirteenth.”

Someone punched the button for the thirteenth floor with a forceful forefinger. Another consulted a plain wristwatch. They ascended smoothly. They had nothing to say to one another; their plans were made, and the walls, they well knew, had ears. Hawksquill remained pressed against the door, facing their blank faces. The doors opened, and neatly she sidled out; just in time too, for there were hands thrust forward to take the hands of the club members.

“The Lecturer will be right with you.”

“If you could wait in this room.”

“Can we order anything up for you. The Lecturer has ordered coffee.”

They were shepherded leftward by alert suited men. One or two young men, in colored blouses, hands clasped behind them in an uneaseful at-ease, stood by every door. At least, Hawksquill thought, he’s wary. From another elevator a red-coated waiter came out carrying a large tray which bore a single tiny cup of coffee. He went rightwards, and Hawksquill followed him. He was admitted through double doors and past guards, and so was Hawksquill at his heels; he came up to an unmarked door, knocked, opened it, and went in. Hawksquill put an invisible foot in the door as he closed it behind him, and then slipped in.

Needle in the Haystack of Time

It was an impersonally-furnished sitting-room with wide windows looking out over the spiky city. The waiter, muttering to himself, passed Hawksquill and exited. Hawksquill took the fragment of bone from her mouth and was carefully putting it away when a farther door opened and Russell Eigenblick came out, yawning, in a blackish, bedragoned silk dressing-gown. He wore on his nose a pair of tiny half-glasses which Hawksquill hadn’t seen before.

He started when he saw her, having expected an empty room.

“You,” he said.

Without much grace (she couldn’t remember ever having done quite this before), Hawksquill lowered herself onto one knee, bowed profoundly, and said, “I am your Majesty’s humble servant.”

“Get up,” Eigenblick said. “Who let you in here?”

“A black cat,” Hawksquill said, rising. “It doesn’t matter. We haven’t much time.”

“I don’t talk to journalists.”

“I’m sorry,” Hawksquill said. “That was an imposition. I’m not a journalist.”

“I thought not!” he said, triumphantly. He snatched the spectacles from his face as though he had just remembered they were there. He moved toward an intercom on the phony Louis Quatorze desk.

“Wait,” Hawksquill said. “Tell me this. Do you want, after eight hundred years of sleep, to fail in your enterprise?”

He turned slowly to regard her.

“You must remember,” Hawksquill went on, “how once you were abased before a certain Pope, and were forced to hold his stirrup, and run beside his horse.”

Eigenblick’s face was suffused. It grew a bright red different from the red of his beard. He rifled fury at Hawksquill from his eagle eyes. “Who are you?” he said.

“At this moment,” Hawksquill said, gesturing toward the farther end of the suite, “men await you who intend to abase you in just such a degree. Only more cleverly. So that you will never notice being clipped. I mean the Noisy Bridge Rod and Gun Club. Or have they presented themselves to you under some other name?”

“Nonsense,” Eigenblick said. “I’ve never heard of this so-called club.” But his eyes clouded; perhaps, somewhere, somewhen, he had been warned… “And what could you mean about the Pope? A charming gentleman who I’ve never met.” His eyes not meeting hers, he picked up his little coffee and drank it off.

But she had him: she saw that. If he didn’t ring to have guards eject her, he would listen. “Have they promised you high position?” she asked.

“The highest,” he said after a long pause, gazing out the window.

“It might interest you to know that for some years those gentlemen have employed me on various errands. I think I know them. Was it the Presidency?”