In The House Of Secret Enemies

'That's not the point. I don't want to answer questions. I don't want anyone to know exactly what happened in that building tonight.'

'Peth will tell them.'

'No, he won't. And none of the others will either. I must beg you not to speak, Mongo, for the sake of our friendship. When I called Garth I told him simply that I had a hunch about you and the warehouse. Garth has learned to trust my hunches.'

'This is no time for games,' I said impatiently. 'How did you know where I was?'

She ignored my question. 'There will be reporters out there, questions that I'm not prepared to answer. I would no longer be able to carry on my work at the university, and you know how important that is to me. It's my link with the. . rest of the world. Please, Mongo. Don't take that away from me.'

She turned and ran off into the darkness without waiting for an answer. I walked slowly toward the flashing lights at the front of the building.

The proverbial mop-up of Peth and his crew was decidedly anticlimactic. When Garth and the other policemen broke down the secret door the members of the coven were waiting calmly.

Their robes and, presumably, all of the records had been consigned to the gas-fed bonfire still roaring from the pit in the center of the floor. They offered no resistance.

As Uranus had predicted, no one mentioned her presence in the building earlier. For some reason I didn't fully understand, I didn't either.

I was exhausted, and my head felt as though it had been stuffed with rotting cotton. Still, I managed to drag myself down to the police station, where I turned over the papers I had taken and made some kind of statement. Then I went home and poured myself a tumbler of Scotch. I wanted desperately to sleep, but there were still a lot of things on my mind.

There was nothing that had happened which could not be explained by a few good guesses and a lot of abnormal psychology emanating from some very sick minds. I needed the Scotch because I realized that Uranus possessed one of those sick minds. A woman I loved was, in my opinion, desperately ill, and I had to find the courage to confront her with this opinion, to suggest that she see a psychiatrist.

Having resolved this, I slipped off my jacket and threw it toward the bed. Only at the last moment did I realize that it somehow seemed heavier than it should. The jacket slid across the smooth bedspread and fell to the floor on the opposite side with a heavy, metallic clunk. The sound shrieked in my ears, echoing down to the very roots of my soul.

Whatever was in the jacket, I didn't want to know about it. I raced around the bed, picked up the jacket and in the same motion sent it hurtling toward the window. The weighted cloth shattered the glass and dropped from sight.

I stood, shaking uncontrollably and breathing hard as the cool wind whistled through the broken pane. Even as a tremendous surge of relief flowed through me, I knew that throwing away the jacket was no answer. If, indeed, there were the forces outside the 'circle of light' Uranus had mentioned, it would do no good for me to deny it: I would merely remain ignorant of their existence. If the jacket was lost, I'd spend the rest of my life wondering what had been in the pocket-and how it had gotten there.

I drained off the Scotch, then went back into the night.

Book of Shadows

It had been a long day with absolutely nothing accomplished. I'd spent most of it grading a depressing set of mid-term papers that led me to wonder what I'd been teaching all semester in my graduate criminology seminar. After that I'd needed a drink.

Instead of doing the perfectly sensible thing and repairing to the local pub, I'd made the mistake of calling my answering service, which informed me there was a real live client waiting for me in my downtown office. The Yellow Pages the man had picked my name out of didn't mention the fact that this particular private detective was a dwarf: One look at me and the man decided he didn't really need a private detective after all.

With my sensitive ego in psychic shreds, I headed home. I planned to quickly make up for my past sobriety and spend an electronically lobotomized evening in front of the television.

I perked up when I saw the little girl waiting for me outside my apartment. Kathy Marsten was a small friend of mine from 4D, down the hall. With her blond hair and blue eyes, dressed in a frilly white dress and holding a bright red patent leather purse, she looked positively beatific. I laughed to myself as I recalled that it had taken me two of her seven years to convince her that I wasn't a potential playmate.

'Kathy, Kathy, Kathy!' I said, picking her up and setting her down in a manner usually guaranteed to produce Instant Giggle. 'How's my girl today?'

'Hello, Mr. Mongo,' she said very seriously.

'Why the good clothes? You look beautiful, but I'd think you'd be out playing with your friends by this time.'

'I came here right after school, Mr. Mongo. I've been waiting for you. I was getting afraid I wouldn't see you before my daddy came home. I wanted to ask you something.'

Now the tears came. I reached down and brushed them away, suddenly realizing that this was no child's game. 'What did you want to ask me, Kathy?'

She sniffled, then regained control of herself in a manner that reminded me of someone much older. 'My daddy says that you sometimes help people for money.'

'That's right, Kathy. Can I help you?'

Her words came in a rush. 'I want you to get my daddy's book of shadows back from Daniel so Daddy will be happy again. But you mustn't tell Daddy. He'd be awful mad at me if he knew I told anybody. But he just has to get it back or something terrible will happen. I just know it.'

'Kathy, slow down and tell me what a 'book of shadows' is. Who's Daniel?'

But she wasn't listening. Kathy was crying again, fumbling in her red purse. 'I've got money for you,' she stammered. 'I've been saving my allowance and milk money.'

Before I could say anything the little girl had taken out a handful of small change and pressed it into my palm. I started to give it back, then stopped when I heard footsteps come up behind me.

'Kathy!' a thin voice said. 'There you are!'

The girl gave me one long, piercing look that was a plea to keep her secret. Then she quickly brushed away her tears and smiled at the person standing behind me. 'Hi, Daddy! I fell and hurt myself. Mr. Mongo was making me feel better.'

I straightened up and turned to face Jim Marsten. He seemed much paler and thinner since I'd last seen him, but perhaps it was my imagination. The fact of the matter was that I knew Kathy much better than I knew either of her parents. We knew each other's names, occasionally exchanged greetings in the hall, and that was it. Marsten was a tall man, the near side of thirty, prematurely balding. The high dome of his forehead accentuated the dark, sunken hollows of his eye sockets. He looked like a man who was caving in.

'Hello, Mongo,' Marsten said.

I absently slipped the money Kathy had given me into my pocket and shook the hand that was extended to me. 'Hi, Jim. Good to see you.'

'Thanks for taking care of my daughter.' He looked at Kathy. 'Are you all right now?'

Kathy nodded her head. Her money felt heavy in my pocket; I felt foolish. By the time I realized I probably had no right to help a seven-year-old child keep secrets from her father, Jim Marsten had taken the hand of his daughter and was leading her off down the hall. Kathy looked back at me once and her lips silently formed the word please.

When they were gone I took Kathy's money out of my pocket and counted it. There was fifty-seven cents.

I must have looked shaky. My brother Garth poured me a second double Scotch and brought it over to where I was sitting. I took a pull at it, then set the glass aside and swore.