“Oh, Kathy!” Linda burbled. “I’ve got one of those nice let’s-see-what-happens dates with him tonight and could you possibly ask us both to dinner? Because he likes you and he’s really just about almost there and if we were . . . you know, all in the family and everything, I think it might just—”
“Jose?” Kathy asked, knowing the answer. She grinned and doubled the quantities on the list.
The worst of the preparations for dinner were over when Linda arrived, carrying, to Kathy’s surprise, a weekend case. The girl devoted only the necessary minimum of time to admiring George’s knitted leg, then dragged her sister into the bedroom.
“Kathy. I’ve got such a problem. He’s known so many women . . . all over two planets and at embassies and maybe even spies. I told you tonight I think he will; only I don’t know what lipstick to use, what perfume, anything. I’ve got to make myself interesting; but I don’t want to overdo it. So I just brought everything I have. You tell me.”
Kathy looked at the array. She thought of her dinner and The Plan and she began giving Linda her advice.
It was the same cast that had attended the awful dinner which inspired The Plan, but they were different people. Jose, no longer the visiting colonial, was a gentleman at home among friends; Linda was radiant in the glow of simplicity and a well-scrubbed face; and George was praising the food.
He praised the green peas. He praised the mashed potatoes. And above all he praised the fried chicken.
“I can’t quite analyze it,” he kept saying. “There’s a touch there I can’t quite get. You’ve brought out the flavor miraculously. It wouldn’t,” he demanded suspiciously, “be that new powder Koenigsberg claims he found among the natives at the tip of the southern continent? I thought they hadn’t shipped any of that in yet.”
“They haven’t, darling,” said Kathy.
“Perhaps the tiniest pinch of balj with a little freshly ground celery seed?”
“No.”
“Then what in two planets—”
“A woman must have some secrets, George. Let’s just say this is . . . a secret of the house.”
At this point Kathy happened to catch Jose’s eye and hastily looked away. It was impossible that a Venusian diplomat would be winking at his hostess!
George was still pursuing his questions over brandy in the living room. Jose, also possibly (Kathy prayed) in a question-asking mood, had led Linda out onto what the architect called the sun-area, though Kathy persisted in thinking of it, more romantically, as the balcony. As she saw the two turn to come back in, Kathy headed for the kitchen, an immemorial spot for sisterly confidences.
But it was not Linda who followed her in. It was Jose. He leaned casually against the door jamb and told her, “Know secret of house.”
“Yes?” said Kathy casually. “Oh, I mean—you do? Sometimes I have to stop and reread you, like a telegram. Well?”
“Bought food of highest quality, cooked it extremely well, relied on nothing but natural flavor, probably little salt. Good old George always wanted so much seasoning, this strikes him as new and revolutionary taste sensation. Right?”
Kathy grinned. “I’ll go quietly,” she said. “I thought it would work and I was sure of it when I ate at his regular lunch place. That’s just what they do; but because it’s a chop house with a reputation, he thinks it’s magic. Except I’ve learned things his way, too. From now on, George gets variety at home—and I think he’ll like all of it without ever knowing why he likes which.”
“Simplicity also magic,” Jose observed. “Your idea—clean, fresh simplicity of Linda that accounts for fact am going to be your brother-in-law. Correct?”
“Correct? Hell, it’s perfect!” Impulsively, Kathy kissed him. “Oh, my!” she said as she drew back. “Now you’ve got lipstick after coming off the balcony spotless!”
“Variety,” said Jose approvingly. “Still wonder one thing, Kathy. Those mashed potatoes—extraordinary. If secret of house, there’s where. Confide in me?”
“Now that you’re part of the family, sure.”
“Yes?”
“The secret is this: I take lots of butter and cream—real cow-stuff, no syntho —and I beat the living bejeepers out of ’em.”
When they returned to the living room, it was obvious that Linda had told George the news. Using his newly recovered leg with as ostentatious pride as a year-old toddler, George advanced paternally upon Jose Lermontov.
“Let tonight’s dinner be a marital lesson to you, my boy. Remember the last time you ate here, and realize that there’s no fault in a wife that a little husbandly persistence can’t cure.”
This time there was no doubt whatsoever that the gentlemanly Venusian diplomat was winking at his hostess.
The Scrawny One
The old magician had only one arm.
“That is why,” he explained, “I now employ the fuse. It is dangerous to reach any part of your body inside the pentacle when you light the powder. They are hungry, these ones that we call up, and our flesh is to their taste.”
John Harker watched the old man lead the fuse from the powder-heaped center of the pentacle to a safe distance from its rim. He watched him lean over and strike a match on the cement floor, watched the sudden flame disquiet the shadows of the deserted warehouse, watched the fuse begin to sputter.
Then John Harker struck. The knife pierced easily through the soft flesh of the old back. His other hand came up to keep the magician from falling across the fuse. He hurled the dying body back, safely away from fuse and pentacle, and thrust it from his mind as his eyes followed the sputtering sparks.
John Harker was unconcerned with fingerprints and clues. After tonight no man could touch him, not even for the most easily proved murder.
He had built to this carefully. Six months of research in the role of a freelance writer, investigating the multitudinous magic cults of Southern California. A meticulous screening of frauds, fakes and phonies, and finally the discovery of this one-armed man of undeniable powers. The arrangements
