Chapter 27

“What’s the big idea?” I demanded. “I thought I was in the clear.”

Harcourt looked somewhat embarrassed.

“Perhaps I oughtn’t to tell you this, Mr. Tompkins,” he explained, “but like you said, you’re in the clear with the Bureau. We’ve checked and double-checked and any way we slice it, you’re still okay. Maybe you’re Tompkins with a lapse of memory, maybe this yarn of yours about Jacklin is on the level, but we’re sure of you.”

“Then why all this interest in me?” I asked. “You’ve been swell with me personally, but it’s getting on my nerves having you pop up all the time. Though I must say I was relieved when you showed up today. Mrs. Rutherford--”

He grinned. “Red heads spell trouble anywhere, any time,” he observed. “No, it’s this Von Bieberstein we’re gunning for. Mr. Lamb at the Bureau has a notion that Von Bieberstein may have some connection with you that you don’t know about. He might be using your office as a post-box or be somebody that you know as someone else. It sounds screwy, I know, but this Von Bieberstein is a slick baby. For all I know, he might even be a woman.”

I glanced inquiringly in the direction of Virginia’s apartment.

“Not for my money,” he said. “We’ve checked her, too. And it isn’t that Tennessee secretary of yours, either. There’s a girl for you. We’ve got her biog right back to the Knoxville doc that delivered her. But the Bureau doesn’t think it’s an accident that you turned up in the middle of this case, so I’ve been told off to check on all your contacts. Seems mighty funny, you a millionaire and me an average guy even if Arthurjean still thinks I got a wife in Brooklyn, but it’s the war, I guess.”

“‘Says every moron, There’s a war on!’” I quoted. I scratched my head. “If only I could remember that blank spot, I might be able to help you.”

Harcourt studied his finger-nails attentively. “We’re taking care of your office contacts, of course, and we have a couple of men working up in Bedford Hills. But New York’s the hell of a big town and almost anything could happen to you outside of your office and your clubs. Got any ideas?”

“What sort?”

“Well, there’s always women but I guess we’ve carried that line as far as it will take us. We’ve checked the doctors and the dentists and the bars and the nightclubs. How about astrologers, say? Hitler made use of them in Germany. He might use ‘em over here, though we’ve screened ‘em all since before Pearl Harbor.”

I laughed. “I doubt that a man like Tompkins would use astrology,” I told him.

Harcourt shook his head. “That’s where you’d be wrong. You’d be surprised how many big Wall Street operators go for that guff.”

“It doesn’t register,” I replied, “but I’ll phone the office and see if Miss Briggs knows.”

When I made the connection, Arthurjean informed me that the phone had been ringing all morning and when would I be in. Vail, she reported, was still in Hartford with a bad case of Emily Post. I asked her about astrologers and she said she didn’t know but would find out. In a little while she reported that Phil Cone thought I’d once gone to see that Ernestina Clump that used to advise the Morgan partners.

“Okay,” I told her. “I’ll be in about four this afternoon and will handle any calls or visitors then.”

I turned to Harcourt. “It doesn’t sound like much but Phil Cone thinks I once consulted Ernestina Clump. Want me to make an appointment?”

He nodded, so I looked up her number and dialed the office in the Chrysler Building where Miss Clump kept track of the stars in their courses and the millionaires in their jitters.

Arranging for an immediate appointment through the very, very well-bred secretarial voice that stiff-armed me was not easy until I said that I would pay double-fees. Then she believed it might be arranged. “That will be two thousand dollars,” she imparted, “and you must be here at one o’clock precisely.”

As we taxied downtown together, Harcourt was uncommunicative, except for the remark that it was right handy to Grand Central and would be no trick to stop off before catching trains.

Miss Clump, as it turned out, was a motherly woman whose wrinkled cheeks and plump hands suggested greater familiarity with the cook-stove than with the planets. Her office showed the most refined kind of charlatanry--everything quite solid and in good taste, with no taint of the Zodiac. At a guess, about ten thousand dollar’s worth of furnishings was involved and I imagined that the annual rental might run as high as six thousand.

“Well, Mr. Tompkins,” Miss Clump remarked in a pleasant, homey voice with a trace of Mid-Western flatness, “I wondered when you would be in to see me again. The stars being mean to you? Or is it another woman?”

“Let’s see,” I stalled, “when was the last time I consulted you?”

She cackled. “Young man, you’ve been comin’ to see me, off and on, the last ten years. Last time was in March. That was about the red-head. Virgo in the House of Scorpio you called it.”

I nodded. “That would be it, I guess. She’s more scorpion than virgin.”

She patted my hand comfortingly across the table. “They all are,” she said, “unless they’re really in love. Then even the stars can’t stop ‘em. What’s the matter now?”

“Police,” I said. “Loss of memory. Women and money are all right but I’m being followed and I’ve drawn sort of blank for the whole month of March. Can you take a look at my horoscope and tell me what the stars were doing to me then?”

She stared at me shrewdly. “Police,” she remarked. “Land’s sakes, I don’t want trouble with the police. Young man, you--”

I hastened to interrupt her. “That’s only a figure of speech. I’m in trouble with the government. Just tell me what I was doing in March and give me a hint of what lies ahead next month.”