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."
She examined the chart carefully and made a few pencilled notes on a
scratch-pad. Then she looked up at me in bewilderment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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