him to be exploring the surface in the usual beeish or waspish way, but rather to be listening, head raised, to their conversation. The room was bugged. He wanted to say,
Ed said, “Bishop’s pawn to the bishop’s four.”
Debbie threw the dice and counted eight squares along the edge of the board. “Oh, good! Park Place, and I’ll buy it.” She handed him her money, and he gave her the deed.
Bev said, “Your turn.”
He nodded, stuffed Debbie’s money into his pocket, shuffled the cards, and read the top one.
You are Randolph Carter.
Three times you have dreamed
of the marvelous city, Randolph Carter,
and three times you have been snatched away
from the high terrace above it.
Randolph Carter nodded again and put the card down. Debbie handed him a small pewter figure, a young man in old-fashioned clothes.
Bev asked, “ ‘Where did the fictional American philosopher Thomas Olney teach?’ Ed?”
“A
“Wrong. Debbie?”
“Pass.”
“Okay. Randy?”
“London.”
Outside, a cloud covered the sun. The room grew darker as the light from the broken windows diminished.
Edgar said, “Good shot. Is he right, Bev?”
The bee, or wasp, rose from its leaf and buzzed around Edgar’s bald head. He slapped at it, missing it by a fraction of an inch. “There’s a fly in here!”
“Not now. I think it went out the window.”
It had indeed been a fly, he saw, and not a bee or wasp at all—a bluebottle, no doubt gorged with carrion.
Bev said, “Kingsport, Massachusetts.”
With an ivory hand, Edgar moved an ivory chessman. “Knight to the king’s three.”
Debbie tossed her dice onto the board. “Chance.”
He picked up the card for her.
You must descend the seven hundred steps
to the Gate of Deeper Slumber.
You may enter the Enchanted Wood
or claim the sword Sacnoth.
Which do you choose?
Debbie said, “I take the Enchanted Wood. That leaves you the sword, Randy.”
Bev handed it to him. It was a falchion, he decided, curved and single edged. After testing the edge with his finger, he laid it in his lap. It was not nearly as large as a real sword—less than sixteen inches long, he decided, including the hardwood handle.
“Your turn, Randy.”
He discovered that he disliked Bev nearly as much as Debbie, hated her bleached blond hair, her scrawny neck. Bev and her dying plant were twins, one vegetable, one inhuman. He had not known that before.
She said, “It’s the wheel of Fortune,” as though he were stupid. He flicked the spinner.
“Unlawful evil.”
Bev said, “Right,” and picked up a card. “ ‘What do the following have in common: Pogo the Clown, H. H. Holmes, and Saucy Jacky?’ ”
Edgar said, “That’s an easy one. They’re all pseudonyms of mass murderers.”
“Right. ‘For an extra point, name the murderers.’”
“Gacy, Mudgett, and . . . that’s not fair. No one knows who the Ripper was.”
But he did: just another guy, a guy like anybody else.
Debbie tossed her dice. “Whitechapel. I’ll buy it. Give me the card, honey.”
He picked up the deed and studied it. “Low rents.”
Edgar chuckled. “And seldom paid.”
“I know,” Debbie told them, “but I want it, with lots of houses.” He handed her the card, and she gave him the dice.
For a moment he rattled them in his hand, trying to imagine himself the little pewter man. It was no use; there was nothing of bright metal about him or his dark wool coat—only the edge of the knife. “Seven-come-eleven,” he said, and threw.
“You got it,” Debbie told him. “Seven. Shall I move it for you?”
“No,” he said. He picked up the little pewter figure and walked past Holborn, the Temple (cavern-temple of Nasht and Kaman-Thah), and Lincolns Inn Fields, along Cornhill and Leadenhall streets to Aldgate High Street, and so at last to Whitechapel.
Bev said, “You saw him coming, Deb,” but her voice was very far away, far above the the leaden (hall) clouds, filthy with coal smoke, that hung over the city. Wagons and hansom cabs rattled by. There was a public house at the corner of Brick Lane. He turned and went in.
