The Sorcerer's House Page 9

  "From what you said, it seemed likely."

  "Right. Nobody's said that. Nobody's mentioned any figures at all, but it was in the air. I could smell it. Have you ever been poor?"

  "No," I said, "but I've been broke. It's not exactly the same thing."

  "You're right, it isn't. And now that I think about it--" She stopped at a traffic light and turned to give me another most fetching smile. "I believe I was broke, too. I still am, or almost. Ted made good money, but he didn't have much life insurance."

  "What a pity!"

  "Yes, isn't it? It took a lot of what we had just to bury him, and there were medical bills. There are, I ought to say. I haven't paid them all yet."

  "I know the feeling. Did we just pass your office?"

  "Yes, I'm looking for a parking place. They're not easy to find at this hour."

  We pulled into one, and she turned off the engine. "I was going to say I was glad I put gas in this last night, because I was thinking of a place way out of town, but . . ."

  "Yes?" I asked.

  "But that's really wrong. It would be foolish, in fact. What I want--what I need, Bax--is a place where people from my office will see us eating together. The place I've got in mind is fairly expensive. It's not terrible, but it is a little pricey. Would that be all right? I promise to order something cheap."

  I said it would be fine, and that she could order anything she wanted.

  "It's the main dining room at the Hilton. They have a great chef."

  "In that case, let's go there."

  "Our people take clients there when there's a big deal in prospect. I'll make a reservation."

  Which she did when we reached her office, telephoning from her desk. After that, we spoke with Mr. Hardaway; but this letter has grown too long already.

  Yours sincerely,

  Bax

  Number 13

  MOUTHPIECE

  Okay, Prof, you asked about a lawyer that might bail you out even if you were broke. I did not know of anybody in that jerkwater town, but I asked around.

  Remember Rick? Tall guy, boosts cars, bad complexion. He said his cousin had this guy and he had talked to him. He is good, Rick said, and he might do it. He likes to see his name in the paper, you know what I mean? The name is Ben Ramsey. Rick said you might want to try him.

  You seem to be messing around with women. You will not listen and I do not blame you, but there are only two kinds. There are women who make trouble for you and women you make trouble for. Just those two. You will find out, so let me know what you do.

  Sheldon Hawes

  Number 14

  IS IT A GHOST?

  Dear George:

  My dinner with Doris--I'll tell you about it in a moment--made me realize that my wardrobe needed more than a few improvements. My clothing is of good quality for the most part, but quite thoroughly worn. I have three suits on order now, and I've bought a sports coat, three pairs of shoes, underwear, some shirts, and four pairs of slacks.

  Emlyn has not returned, though I would be glad to see him, and Winkle has vanished once more; but there have been other developments. I shall attempt to describe them in order.

  Did I mentioned Nicholas the Butler? While Doris was making our reservation, an older woman asked me about the Black House and whether I had seen him. Her manner implied that this butler was a boogeyman of some sort; so I said, "No," which was all I had time for.

  Mr. Hardaway is a large, tweedy man, quite bald; he smokes cigars, although a pipe would fit him better. He welcomed us, shook my hand heartily, and invited me to take a chair.

  Doris said, "May I sit in, sir? I feel I should."

  "That's up to Mr. Dunn." Mr. Hardaway gave me a quick professional smile. "Will you feel outnumbered, Mr. Dunn? You can believe me absolutely when I say that Mrs. Griffin and I have your best interests at heart."

  I said that if what we were going to discuss concerned real estate, I would certainly want Mrs. Griffin present.

  "It does. You knew the late Mr. Skotos?"

  "I prefer to reserve that, Mr. Hardaway."

  He frowned. "We're not likely to get very far if you mean that."

  "As you wish. I came here at your request. If you've nothing to say to me, I'll be happy to leave."

  "You are Mr. Dunn?"

  I nodded.

  "Mr. Baxter Dunn?"

  "Correct. I can show you a driver's license. Would you like to see it? The picture is less than flattering, but it is a picture."

  "Could you, if asked, produce a birth certificate?"

  "No, sir."

  Mr. Hardaway raised his eyebrows. "You couldn't?"

  "No. My brother and I were adopted. Presumably there are birth certificates somewhere, but the names they carry will not be George and Baxter Dunn."

  "You have a brother?"

  I nodded.

  "He would be able to vouch for your identity?"

  "Certainly. And there will be school records and so on. I have two Ph.D.'s, and various other degrees. There should be no difficulty."

  "I see. Would you care for a cigar, Mr. Dunn?"

  "No, thank you. But I have no objection to your smoking."

  He laughed. "Mrs. Griffin would object, I'm sure. She wouldn't say it, but all the same . . . I'll wait."

  Doris said, "Thank you, sir."

  "Is there anyone else who could vouch for your identity, Mr. Dunn?"

  "My sister-in-law would be an obvious reference, I'd think. Millie's known me for years. My parents are dead, but I have several cousins. Other than that, there's Mrs. Murrey. Mrs. Murrey gave me the deed to thirteen hundred Riverpath Road. Murrey and Associates? You must know of her."

  He nodded. "She was satisfied that you're Baxter Dunn?"

  "Yes. Obviously."

  Doris coughed apologetically. "So am I, Mr. Hardaway. When I met Mr. Dunn he knew nothing about this."

  "He knows almost nothing now," I added. "Would you mind telling me what we're talking about?"

  Mr. Hardaway cleared his throat. "We're talking about the Skotos Strip, Mr. Dunn. It's a tract of land on the other side of the river. A tract roughly three miles long and half a mile wide."

  I sensed, rather than saw, Doris's reaction.

  "Let me tell you the whole thing from my point of view. Fifteen years ago I was just Jim Hardaway, another real-estate salesman. Do you shoot, Mr. Dunn?"

  "Birds, you mean?" I shook my head.

  "Handguns. It's my hobby. I collect old pistols and revolvers. There's a range outside of town, and I shoot a bit. At the range, I became friendly with Alex Skotos."

  "Yes?"

  "He was a shooter and a collector, too. We had a lot in common, and we did some trading. Say that I had an old dueling pistol. I might trade it to him for a Peacemaker. Sometimes we just got together to talk."

  "I understand."

  "When we'd known each other for a year or so, he asked me about investments. He was thinking, he said, of putting some money into real estate. Short term?, I said, or long? He said long, so I told him what I always tell everybody. The best long-term investment a man can make is undeveloped land fronting on water. He asked me to look around."

  Doris said, "I know it must be a good property, sir. You would never advise a client to buy one that wasn't."

  "I didn't find the Skotos Strip all at once," Hardaway told her. "I did find him a good-sized tract that became the nucleus of it. After that, I handled the negotiations for him. He wanted the property on either side, and it took four or five years to get it." Mr. Hardaway paused, clearly wishing he could light a cigar.

  "Alex passed away, and I was surprised to find out he'd made me his executor. Thunderstruck, in fact. But when I thought the matter over, it made a great deal of sense. He'd had no wife and no kids. No other relatives, so far as I could discover. His gun collection was nice, but not terribly valuable. You could duplicate it today for about thirty thousand, in my judgment. Other than that and his furniture, his estate consisted of a
sizable bank account and the Skotos Strip. That's what we've been calling it here at the agency."

  Doris asked, "Didn't he own a home, sir?"

  "No. He leased an apartment. His will was a simple one, but it hasn't been simple to carry out. He directed that his furniture should be auctioned. The same thing for his collection, except for one nice set of cased dueling pistols. He was particularly fond of them and wanted them to go to his heir."

  "And Mr. Dunn is the heir?"

  "I think so." Hardaway turned to me. "There's better than a hundred thousand in the account. A hundred and five thousand and change. Are you impressed?"

  "Tolerably."

  He laughed. "I agree. There's also the Skotos Strip of one and a half square miles. One square mile is six hundred and forty acres, so nine hundred and sixty in the Strip. Allow a hundred and sixty for streets. That's four hundred two-acre building lots. Two acres is a large lot."

  I said I knew that.

  "For two-acre lots in that location you could, in my judgement, average about ten thousand dollars today if the operation were handled right. So, four million. There'd be commissions to pay and other expenses." He smiled. "You'd be looking at well over three million even so."

  "If I sell now," I said.

  "Exactly. Are you going to?"

  "I don't know. To begin with, Mr. Hardaway, I don't require the money. My needs are modest, and I have more than a sufficiency. The best investment a man can make, or so I've heard, is unimproved land fronting water. It might be wise for me to hold the land for a few more years before I cash in."

  "You're right. I was about to advise you, in fact I do advise you, to sell those lots off slowly. If we do that--pardon me, I misspoke. As executor, I could not be a party to the transaction."

  I objected. "But Mrs. Griffin is my agent."

  She took my hand.

  "Okay, but she's an associate here at the agency. She doesn't represent me as a person, in other words. You can, if you want to, and I hope you will, engage the Country Hill Agency to act in your behalf. Naturally the agency can and will have Mrs. Griffin take personal charge of your account."

  Doris said, "When will Bax get the property?"

  But I have gone on too long about this, George. I shall summarize. I told Mr. Hardaway that I would make no decision regarding the Skotos Strip until I was thoroughly familiar with it. Doris and I will look at it in a day or two. (The locksmith is coming today, and I want to buy hiking boots and so on.) Mr. Hardaway will contact the lawyer and ask him to schedule a reading of the will as soon as possible.

  No doubt you are happy for me, George. How fervently I hope so!

  On to other matters. Doris and I dined at the Hilton as planned. We discussed the Strip until one of her coworkers stopped at our table. "Have you two heard about the Hound of Horror? That's what they're calling it."

  We asked for details.

  "It's killed another woman, a nurse who was half an hour late getting off shift. The story was on the five o'clock news. Got her in the hospital parking lot. They've found part of her body."

  "Only part?" Doris asked.

  "Right. The report I saw didn't say which part, just that part of her had been found next to her car. I didn't mean to scare you, but both the victims have been women and both were caught outside alone not long after sundown. You be careful, Doris." He left before she could reply.

  She looked at me. "Well, I am scared."

  "I don't blame you. So am I. I saw the first body."

  "Did you really?"

  I nodded and explained.

  "Let me get this straight. You inherited the Black House from Mr. Black?"

  "No, not exactly. He put it in my name and told the agency Martha worked for at the time that I would be along to claim it. When the agency dissolved, Martha took it over."

  "Alexander Skotos did the same thing, or almost."

  "I suppose you could say that, although Mr. Black simply gave me his house."

  "His haunted house."

  I shrugged. "Did you hear that woman ask whether I'd seen the butler?"

  "Alice? Yes, I did. She was just being friendly. She's a nice person."

  "I'm sure she is, but I haven't seen him. Is he a ghost?"

  "I suppose. There was a story in the paper last Halloween. That's all I know about it, and I imagine all that Alice knows, too."

  "Tell me, please."

  "I'll try. Supposedly Mr. Black had this horrible butler, who went out at night and stole clotheslines."

  "What?"

  "Stole clotheslines. That's what the piece in the paper said. If you didn't take the clothes in before dark, this butler--I forget his name--would come around and steal the line with the clothes still on it. Then when Mr. Black died or moved away or whatever he did, the butler stayed behind. People would see him once or twice a year."

  I swallowed a bite of steak. "Isn't this rather tame for Halloween? I was expecting something, well, stronger."

  "I'm getting to that. One day a bunch of kids decided they'd spend the night in the Black House. I don't know how . . . They were going to climb in through a window. That was it. They went to the window, and inside they saw the butler with a human head on a tray."

  "Ah hah!"

  "They ran away, and in their panic they got lost. The article was written by the daughter of one of the girls. I remember that now. They wandered around until they saw an old man sitting on the ground under a tree. He called them over and asked what they were doing, and they told him the whole story. He nodded and laughed and said he could explain everything. The butler had worked for King Herod in biblical times, and he was the one who had carried in the head of John the Baptist. God punished him by making him stay down here, always as a butler, until he found somebody who would eat the head. Is this bothering you, Bax?"

  "It certainly is," I told her. "I wanted to laugh, but I was afraid I'd choke."

  "Then the old man invited them to come into his house. He said he'd get them something to eat and drive them home. They went inside and ate, and one of them asked his name, and he said, 'I am Mr. Black.' "

  "At which point," I said, "they realized that they had been eating the head of John the Baptist."

  Doris giggled. "I'll bet you're right. You got me talking about this to get my mind off the Hound, didn't you?"

  I disclaimed any such intention.

  "I know you did, and I've got a question for you. If I have a whiskey sour, will you be afraid to ride with me?"

  "Absolutely not."

  "Want one?"

  I explained that my past experiences with alcohol had been less than fortunate.

  "But it won't bother you if I do?"

  "Not at all."

  She had three before we left, and thinking it prudent, I drove. I was badly out of practice, but I managed well enough. Doris gave me directions and showed me where to park, and we were very good friends indeed by the time we went up to her digs.

  For Millie's sake, I will spare you the interesting details; but I slept soundly last night, and this morning Doris (only a trifle hungover) kindly returned me to this house before going to work.

  I was about to give you four or five pages of incisive reflections upon my recent adventures, George. And now I am badly tempted to write them anyway. You will admit they have been extraordinary? I have much of substance to say about them, but you are spared.

  The locksmith arrived while I was meditating. His name is Les Nilsen, and he's a big blond fellow who seems quite competent. I took him to the garage. He glanced at the locks and asked whether I wanted to save them. I said that I saw no point in it, after which he took an acetylene torch from his truck and burned through all three shackles.

  After that, he helped me open the doors, which are heavy and were in every case stuck tight with paint. The first bay contained gardening tools, neatly arranged and all quite old. There was a reel mower, a scythe, a sickle, a collection of spades, and so on. The second--we could see into it fro
m the first--contained old furniture and pictures, very much like the attic.

  The third surprised us both. Amazed would not be too strong a word. In it was an automobile, and I believe it must be the largest I have ever seen. It is covered with dust and cobwebs, but seems to be in fine condition. The headlights are huge; beyond that, George, it truly beggars my poor powers of description. There are three seats. The first, with room for the driver and a single passenger, has a leather top which can (could?) be folded back. There are three axles, one front and two rear. There are six doors, and the trunk is an actual trunk, a huge piece of luggage that could not possibly be carried by fewer than four men.

  "This," Les whispered, "is worth a ton of money."

  I was still taking it in and said nothing.

  He tried to open the driver's door, but it was locked. After that, he tried all the rest in turn. "All locked," he reported. "Could be they're just corroded shut, but I don't think so. She's in too good a shape for that. I'm going to pick it."

  Which he did in short order.

  "I could make you a key, maybe. My guess is the same one would work for all six. Probably the ignition, too."

  I encouraged him to do so.

  "It'll cost. I might's well tell you. I'll take the lock out now and take it back to the shop. No extra charge for that, but making a key's goin' to run you forty dollars per each hour. Could be as much as eighty or a hundred."

  I gave him my number and told him to call me if it appeared that his charges were liable to exceed one hundred dollars.

  Now a confession. I became curious about the contents of the trunk, but became curious too late. The trunk was locked; I had paid Les and he had gone. So I will have to wait. It is probably empty anyway.

  As am I, George. I had a very sketchy breakfast with Doris and have not eaten since. A large lunch figures in my immediate plans. After that, I will deposit my check (which I still have not done), put some of the money from the mattress in the bank, and endeavor to purchase hiking boots, a pair of stout jeans, mosquito repellent, and so forth--all that I will require to explore the Skotos Strip with Doris. A hunting knife should not be terribly costly, and will look virile.