"This doesn't make much sense, Mr. Tompkins," she told me, "but here it
is. So far as I can make out, in March you went on a long trip and had
some kind of bad accident. There's Neptune and Saturn in conjunction
under Aries and Venus in opposition. That could mean more trouble
with that girl, I s'pose. Then early in April you came under a new
sign--money it looks like, lots, of it, and Venus is right for you. It
looks like happiness. Now for the future, there's something I don't
understand. There's a sort of jumble--an accident mebbe--right ahead of
you and then some kind of crisis. You're going to live quite happy with
a woman for a while--and, well, that's all I can see, except--" she
paused.
I raised my eyebrows. "Except what?" I asked. "I want the truth."
She lowered her head. "It _might_ be a bad illness," she said, "but
it's the combination I generally call a death--somebody else's death,
that is. You aren't planning to murder anybody, are you?"
I leaned back in my chair and laughed heartily.
"Good Lord, no! Miss Clump. And even if I did I have money enough to
hire somebody to do it for me--like the government. Here's a check for
you," I added. "Two thousand, I think you said."
"Be careful," she told me in a low voice, almost in a whisper. "Be
very, very careful. I don't like to see that combination in the stars.
It might mean bad trouble."
I rejoined Harcourt in the downstairs bar of the Vanderbilt Hotel and
gave him a quick account of Miss Clump's forecast.
"That looks pretty hot," he allowed, "except that it sounds like
anybody. The usual line is money coming in, successful trouble, and
just call again sometime. Anyhow, the Bureau doesn't handle murder and
you don't look like a killer to me, even though you've got yourself
back in good shape, physically, I mean."
"She sounded pretty much in earnest," I told him, "but I'm damned if I
know where I'd begin if I went in for a career of killing."
"So you think she's on the level?" he asked. "It's all hooey to me."
I considered carefully before I answered him.
"The astrologers claim," I told him, "that they practice an exact
science. They have won law-suits based on that claim and have won
exemption from the old statutes against gypsies and fortune tellers.
Miss Clump is a good showwoman. Her fees are high as the Chrysler
Building and her office costs plenty. No stuffed owls or dried bats or
any junk that would make a businessman think he was going slumming.
When she talked to me she seemed honestly surprised at what she claimed
she saw in the stars and she certainly sounded entirely in earnest when
she warned me. My guess is that she's on the level and has nothing to
do with Von Bieberstein, if there is such a person."
Harcourt sipped his Coca-Cola, being on duty and hence not drinking, in
official silence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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