Black Easter (2 page)

‘Some – mostly the products of my own research, and very few of them of any real importance to you. The main scholium of magic is “arcane” only because most people don’t know what books to read or where to find them. Given those books – and sometimes, somebody to translate them for you – you could learn almost everything important that I know in a year. To make something of the material, of course, you’d have to have the talent, since magic is also an art. With books and the gift, you could become a magician – either you are or you aren’t, there are no bad magicians, any more than there is such a thing as a bad mathematician – in about twenty years. If it didn’t kill you first, of course, in some equivalent of a laboratory accident. It takes that long, give or take a few years, to develop the skills involved. I don’t mean to say you wouldn’t find it formidable, but the age of secrecy is past. And really the old codes were rather simple-minded, much easier to read than, say, musical notation. If they weren’t, well, computers could break them in a hurry.’

Most of these generalities were familiar stuff to Baines, as Ware doubtless knew. Baines suspected the magician of offering them in order to allow time for himself to be studied by the client. This suspicion crystallized promptly as a swinging door behind Ware’s huge desk chair opened silently, and a short-skirted blonde girl in a pageboy coiffure came in with a letter on a small silver tray.

‘Thank you, Greta. Excuse me,’ Ware said, taking the tray. ‘We wouldn’t have been interrupted if this weren’t important.’ The envelope crackled expensively in his hands as he opened it.

Baines watched the girl go out – a moving object, to be sure, but except that she reminded him vaguely of someone else, nothing at all extraordinary – and then went openly about inspecting Ware. As usual, he started with the man’s chosen surroundings.

The magician’s office, brilliant in the afternoon sunlight, might have been the book-lined study of any doctor or lawyer, except that the room and the furniture were outsize. That said very little about Ware, for the house was a rented cliffside palazzo; there were bigger ones available in Positano had
Ware been interested in still higher ceilings and worse acoustics. Though most of the books looked old, the office was no mustier than, say, the library of Merton College, and it contained far fewer positively ancient instruments. The only trace in it that might have been attributable to magic was a faint smell of mixed incenses, which the Tyrrhenian air coming in through the opened windows could not entirely dispel; but it was so slight that the nose soon tired of trying to detect it. Besides, it was hardly diagnostic by itself; small Italian churches, for instance, also smelled like that – and so did the drawing rooms of Egyptian police chiefs.

Ware himself was remarkable, but with only a single exception, only in the sense that all men are unique to the eye of the born captain. A small, spare man he was, dressed in natural Irish tweeds, a French-cuffed shirt linked with what looked like ordinary steel, a narrow, grey, silk four-in-hand tie with a single very small sapphire chessman – a rook – tacked to it. His leanness seemed to be held together with cables; Baines was sure that he was physically strong, despite a marked pallor, and that his belt size had not changed since he had been in high school.

His present apparent age was deceptive. His face was seamed, and his bushy grey eyebrows now only slightly suggested that he had once been red-haired. His hair proper could not, for – herein lay his one marked oddity – he was tonsured, like a monk, blue veins crawling across his bare white scalp as across the papery backs of his hands. An innocent bystander might have taken him to be in his late sixties. Baines knew him to be exactly his own age, which was forty-eight. Black magic, not surprisingly, was obviously a wearing profession; cerebrotonic types like Ware, as Baines had often observed of the scientists who worked for Consolidated Warfare Service (div. A. O. LeFebre et Cie.), ordinarily look about forty-five from a real age of thirty until their hair turns white, if a heart attack doesn’t knock them off in the interim.

The parchment crackled and Jack Ginsberg unobtrusively touched his dispatch case, setting going again a tape recorder back in Rome. Baines thought Ware saw this, but chose to take no notice. The magician said:

‘Of course, it’s also faster if my clients are equally frank
with me.’

‘I should think you’d know all about me by now,’ Baines said. He felt an inner admiration. The ability to pick up an interrupted conversation exactly where it had been left off is rare in a man. Women do it easily, but seldom to any purpose.

‘Oh, Dun and Bradstreet,’ Ware said, ‘newspaper morgues, and of course the grapevine – I have all that, naturally. But I’ll still need to ask some questions.’

‘Why not read my mind?’

‘Because it’s more work than it’s worth. I mean your excellent mind no disrespect, Mr Baines. But one thing you must understand is that magic is hard work. I don’t use it out of laziness, I am not a lazy man, but by the same token I do take the easier ways of getting what I want if easier ways are available.’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘An example, then. All magic – I repeat,
all
magic, with no exceptions whatsoever – depends upon the control of demons. By demons I mean specifically fallen angels. No lesser class can do a thing for you. Now, I know one such whose earthly form includes a long tongue. You may find the notion comic.’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Let that pass for now. In any event, this is also a great prince and president, whose apparition would cost me three days of work and two weeks of subsequent exhaustion. Shall I call him up to lick stamps for me?’

‘I see the point,’ Baines said. ‘All right, ask your questions.’

Thank you. Who sent you to me?’

‘A medium in Bel Air – Los Angeles. She attempted to blackmail me, so nearly successfully that I concluded that she did have some real talent and would know somebody who had more. I threatened her life and she broke.’

Ware was taking notes. ‘I see. And she sent you to the Rosicrucians?’

‘She tried, but I already knew that dodge. She sent me to Monte Albano.’

‘Ah. That surprises me, a little. I wouldn’t have thought that you’d have any need of treasure finders.’

‘I do and I don’t,’ Baines said. ‘I’ll explain that, too, but a little later, if you don’t mind. Primarily I wanted someone in
your speciality – murder – and of course the white monks were of no use there. I didn’t even broach the subject with them. Frankly, I only wanted to test your reputation, of which I’d had hints. I, too, can use newspaper morgues. Their horror when I mentioned you was enough to convince me that I ought to talk to you, at least.’

‘Sensible. Then you don’t really believe in magic yet – only in ESP or some such nonsense.’

‘I’m not,’ Baines said guardedly, ‘a religious man.’

‘Precisely put. Hence, you want a demonstration. Did you bring with you the mirror I mentioned on the phone to your assistant?’

Silently, Jack took from his inside jacket pocket a waxed paper envelope, from which he in turn removed a lady’s hand mirror sealed in glassine. He handed it to Baines, who broke the seal.

‘Good. Look in it.’

Out of the corners of Baine’s eyes, two slow thick tears of dark venous blood were crawling down beside his nose. He lowered the mirror and stared at Ware.

‘Hypnotism,’ he said, quite steadily. ‘I had hoped for better.’

‘Wipe them off,’ Ware said, unruffled.

Baines pulled out his immaculate monogrammed handkerchief. On the white-on-white fabric, the red stains turned slowly into butter-yellow gold.

‘I suggest you take those to a government metallurgist tomorrow,’ Ware said. ‘I could hardly have hypnotized him. Now perhaps we might get down to business.’

‘I thought you said –’

That even the simplest trick requires a demon. So I did, and I meant it. He is sitting at your back now, Mr Baines, and he will be there until the day after tomorrow at this hour. Remember that – day after tomorrow. It will cost me dearly to have turned this little piece of silliness, but I’m used to having to do such things for a sceptical client – and it will be included in my bill. Now, if you please, Mr Baines, what
do
you want?’

Baines handed the handkerchief to Jack, who folded it carefully and put it back in its waxed-paper wrapper. ‘I,’ Baines said, ‘of course want someone killed. Tracelessly.’

‘Of course, but who?’

‘I’ll tell you that in a minute. First of all, do you exercise any scruples?’

‘Quite a few,’ Ware said. ‘For instance, I don’t kill my friends, not for any client. And possibly I might balk at certain strangers. However, in general, I do have strangers sent for, on a regular scale of charges.’

‘Then we had better explore the possibilities,’ Baines said.

‘I’ve got an ex-wife who’s a gross inconvenience to me. Do you balk at that?’

‘Has she any children – by you or anybody else?’

‘No, none at all.’

‘In that case, there’s no problem. For that kind of job, my standard fee is fifteen thousand dollars, flat.’

Despite himself, Baines stared in astonishment. ‘Is that all?’ he said at last.

‘That’s all. I suspect that I’m almost as wealthy as you are, Mr Baines. After all, I can find treasure as handily as the white monks can – indeed, a good deal better. I use these alimony cases to keep my name before the public. Financially they’re a loss to me.’

‘What kinds of fees are you interested in?’

‘I begin to exert myself slightly at about five million.’

If this man was a charlatan, he was a grandiose one. Baines said, ‘Let’s stick to the alimony case for the moment. Or rather, suppose I don’t care about the alimony, as in fact I don’t. Instead, I might not only want her dead, but I might want her to die badly. To suffer.’

‘I don’t charge for that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Mr Baines,’ Ware said patiently, ‘I remind you, please, that I myself am not a killer. I merely summon and direct the agent. I think it very likely – in fact, I think it beyond doubt – that any patient I have sent for dies in an access of horror and agony beyond your power to imagine, or even of mine. But you did specify that you wanted your murder done “tracelessly”, which obviously means that I must have no unusual marks left on the patient. I prefer it that way myself. How then could I prove suffering if you asked for it, in a way inarguable enough
to charge you extra for it?

‘Or, look at the other side of the shield, Mr Baines. Every now and then, an unusual divorce client asks that the ex-consort be carried away painlessly, even sweetly, out of some residue of sentiment. I
could
collect an extra fee for that, on a contingent basis, that is, if the body turns out to show no overt marks of disease or violence. But my agents are demons, and sweetness is not a trait they can be compelled to exhibit, so I never accept that kind of condition from a client, either. Death is what you pay for, and death is what you get. The circumstances are up to the agent, and I don’t offer my clients anything that I know I can’t deliver.’

‘All right, I’m answered,’ Baines said. ‘Forget Dolores–actually she’s only a minor nuisance, and only one of several, for that matter. Now let’s talk about the other end of the spectrum. Suppose instead that I should ask you to … send for … a great political figure. Say, the governor of California – or, if he’s a friend of yours, pick a similiar figure who isn’t.’

Ware nodded. ‘He’ll do well enough. But you’ll recall that I asked you about children. Had you really turned out to have been an alimony case, I should next have asked you about surviving relatives. My fees rise in direct proportion to the numbers and kinds of people a given death is likely to affect. This is partly what you call scruples, and partly a species of self-defence. Now in the case of a reigning governor, I would charge you one dollar for every vote he got when he was last elected. Plus expenses, of course.’

Baines whistled in admiration. ‘You’re the first man I’ve ever met who’s worked out a system to make scruples pay. And I can see why you don’t care about alimony cases. Someday, Mr Ware –’

‘Doctor
Ware, please. I am a Doctor of Theology.’

‘Sorry. I only meant to say that someday I’ll ask you why you want so much money. You asthenics seldom can think of any good use for it. In the meantime, however, you’re hired. Is it all payable in advance?’

‘The expenses are payable in advance. The fee is C.O.D. As you’ll realize once you stop to think about it, Mr Baines –’

‘Doctor
Baines. I am an LL.D.’

‘Apologies in exchange. I want you to realize, after these courtesies, that I have never, never been bilked.’

Baines thought about what was supposed to be at his back until the day after tomorrow. Pending the test of the golden tears on the handkerchief, he was willing to believe that he should not try to cheat Ware. Actually, he had never planned to.

‘Good,’ he said, getting up. ‘By the same token, we don’t need a contract. I agree to your terms.’

‘But what for?’

‘Oh,’ Baines said, ‘we can use the governor of California for a starter. Jack here will iron out any remaining details with you. I have to get back to Rome by tonight.’

‘You did say, “For a starter?” ‘

Baines nodded shortly. Ware, also rising, said, ‘Very well. I shall ask no questions. But in fairness, Mr Baines. I should warn you that on your next commission of this kind, I shall ask you what
you
want.’

‘By that time,’ Baines said, holding his excitement tightly bottled, ‘we’ll
have
to exchange such confidences. Oh, Dr Ware, will the, uh, demon on my back go away by itself when the time’s up or must I see you again to get it taken off?’

‘It isn’t
on
your back,’ Ware said. ‘And it will go by itself. Marlowe to the contrary, misery does not love company.’

Baring his teeth, Baines said, ‘We’ll see about that.’

For a moment, Jack Ginsberg felt the same soon-to-be-brief strangeness of the man who does not really know what is going on and hence thinks he might be about to be fired. It was as though something had swallowed him by mistake, and – quite without malice – was about to throw him up again.