The Clairvoyant Countess (24 page)

And then at quarter past five Benson paged him from an office telephone and asked him to come upstairs. He sounded excited. “They say they’ve got something.”

Pruden raced upstairs and found the three psychics talking in the hall. Madame Karitska said eagerly, “We all received it—all of us, simultaneously. It was marvelously clear and strong. It has to mean something: a glass of beer.”

“A
what?
” said Pruden blankly.

“A glass of beer. Amber liquid with white foam in a glass mug.”

Pruden tried not to show his disappointment. “You really think it’s important?”

Faber-Jones said stiffly, “My dear Lieutenant, you can’t expect a full-blown telegram; of course it has to mean something. Just the
sending
of such a picture took enormous concentration. Enormous.”

“Beer,” Pruden repeated. “Beer … malt … foam … a
glass mug … Cocktail bar, maybe? Saloon?” Then he gasped, “
Brewery!
The old Wirlitzer place is down there near Convention Hall.” He snapped his fingers. “Benson, send a message—oh, to hell with it, come on, let’s go.”

When the car pulled up in front of the huge, dilapidated old Wirlitzer Building it was six o’clock and the first flakes of snow had begun to drift through the circles of light carved out of the darkness by the street lamps. A cold November wind blew in from the river, setting Pruden’s teeth on edge. Even when he turned off the siren there was no cessation of sound as other patrol cars converged on the scene, their headlights invading the black silhouette of the building. Pruden climbed out of his car to meet the others and they conferred quietly near the boarded-up entrance to the brewery.

“Can we go too?” asked Gavin when Pruden returned to the car.

“Not on your life,” Pruden told him. “That place was condemned eight years ago. There’s also no way of knowing whether Tommy Brudenhall’s in there, armed. If it
is
the right place,” he added, with a worried glance at the sky.

“We just have to wait?” Gavin asked, disappointed.

“We just have to wait,” Pruden told him, and began unwinding his walkie-talkie.

Occasionally Swope’s voice drifted in to them, reporting the top floor searched, and then the second floor, and once or twice they could see the flash of lights moving behind shuttered windows. The snow blurred and softened the harsh outlines of the building and danced through the beams of the spotlights set up
to illuminate the door. Nobody spoke.

Suddenly Swope’s voice interrupted the appalling silence. “We’ve found her!” he shouted. “We’ve found her, Lieutenant! Down in the basement.”

Gavin reached out and touched Madame Karitska, found her hand and squeezed it.

“But you’d better call an ambulance,” added Swope. “She’s pretty weak. Says Brudenhall hasn’t been around for three days. No food, no water. As soon as we get the handcuffs off her we’ll be up.”

They climbed out of the car and stood waiting in the howling wind, the snowflakes biting their eyes. Presently the wooden door opened slowly. Pruden went forward to help, followed at a distance by the others, so that he was the first to see her as she moved into the spotlight. She didn’t look at all like her passport picture, he thought. She limped toward him supported by two policemen, tall and loose-limbed, looking younger than he’d expected in a pair of old blue-jeans and a dirty sweat shirt, long, pale-gold hair framing a gamin face.

He said with a sense of awe, “Hello there.”

“She wants to meet the Karitska woman,” said Benson.

Jan Heyer broke away and stumbled toward Madame Karitska, half laughing, half crying. “Meet?” she said, embracing her. “But I already know you—know you all so well!”

Pruden watched her turn toward Faber-Jones and Gavin, and he felt an inexplicable stab of jealousy. The ambulance attendant moved forward to help and Pruden, oddly reluctant to see her go, walked to the door of the ambulance and waited there.

The girl passed him. Seeing him in the spotlight for the first time she gave him a startled glance and said,
“Oh!”
and then added shyly, “Thank you very much.” The doors closed behind her, the driver climbed inside, and the ambulance pulled away, leaving him standing there alone.

“Well, my friend?” said Madame Karitska, joining him.

He said in astonishment, “She’s lovely.”

“Yes, and so fair-haired,” pointed out Madame Karitska, her eyes mischievous.

“But, damn it,” he said helplessly, “all I could say was ‘hello there.’ She’d been through hell and all I could do was gape at her like a bloody schoolboy and say ‘hello there.’ ”

“Yes,” said Madame Karitska, amused. “Nevertheless you will see her again. Would you have preferred to throw your coat on the ground for her to walk on? It would have become very wet, my friend, for I doubt that you’ve noticed but it’s snowing quite hard now.”

“You don’t understand,” Pruden said angrily. “I felt such a clumsy fool … I feel like such a fool
now.
”

Madame Karitska regarded him with impatience. “My dear Lieutenant,” she said, “if you could only turn the kaleidoscope a fraction of an inch the view would dazzle you! In the meantime, however, it is excruciatingly cold here and Gavin has begun sneezing and what we all need is a cup of very hot strong coffee—Turkish, of course. Shall we go?”

Please turn the page
for an exciting peek at
Dorothy Gilman’s
new novel

KALEIDOSCOPE,

featuring Madame Karitska.

Available at your local bookstore.
Published by The Random House Publishing Group.

Madame Karitska, leaving the shabby brownstone on Eighth Street, gave only a cursory glance at the sign in the first-floor window that read
MADAME KARITSKA
,
READINGS
. It was ironic, she thought as she stepped into the bright noon sunshine, how a talent that had earned her whippings as a child, and for which she had never before accepted money, had led her so firmly to this street a year ago, and to this brownstone, to place the sign in the window that at last admitted her gift of clairvoyance.

On the other hand, her life had always been filled with surprises, and among them, here in Trafton, was her blossoming friendship with Detective Lieutenant Pruden, whose suspicions and skepticism had long since been obliterated by the help she’d been able to offer him in his work. The shoddiness of the neighborhood neither bothered nor depressed her; after all, she had known poverty in Kabul, and wealth in Antwerp, and poverty again in America, and in spite of Eighth Street’s flirting with decay it no longer seemed to deter her clients, which amused her. She was becoming known.

At the moment, however, she was between appointments and free to venture uptown for a few purchases, and she was in no hurry; she walked slowly, drinking in the sounds and colors along the way as if they were intoxicating, as for her they were. Reaching Tenth Street
she saw that the warmth of the sun had brought Sreja Zagredi out of his secondhand furniture store to sit in the sun, and she greeted him cordially.

His eyes brightened. “Ah, Madame Karitska, you have the step of a young girl!”

“And you the heart of a brigand,” she told him. “How is my rug today?”

“Still here,” he told her, pointing to it displayed in the window. “I have a very good offer for it the other day, from a man uptown who appreciates the finest of old rugs, I assure you.”

“Nonsense,” said Madame Karitska crisply, “it’s a poor copy of an Oriental rug, and shabby as well.”

“Shabby! A good rug ages like wine,” he told her indignantly. “You want garish colors, God forbid? A hundred dollars is still my price, but only for you.”

Madame Karitska smiled. “The colors
were
garish,” she pointed out amiably, “but you’ve had it hanging in the sun all winter, spring and summer to fade it. My offer remains eighty-five dollars.”

“Eighty-five!” He pulled at his considerable hair in anguish. “What a fool you make of me to tell this stranger from uptown I save it for a friend! With five children to feed you speak starvation to me, Madame Karitska.”

She observed him critically. “Scarcely starving. I think you could lose at least twenty pounds, Mr. Zagredi, if you cut down on the
brînzǎ
and the raki.”

“This is a rug worth at least one hundred fifty uptown!”

Madame Karitska shrugged. “Then take it uptown, Mr. Zagredi.”

He blew through his mustache and eyed her shrewdly. “For you I have already come down to one hundred.”

“And for you I have already gone up to eighty-five,” she reminded him.

They eyed each other appreciatively, and he laughed.
“There is no one like you anymore, Madame Karitska; you know how to haggle like in the old country and it does my heart good. Like the knife—sharp!”

“Very sharp, yes,” she told him cheerfully. “In the meantime it is good to see you, and say hello to your wife for me, Mr. Zagredi.”

“Come for a dinner of
mǎmǎligǎ
,” he called after her. “Come soon—you are the only one who can put sense into my son’s head about school.”

“I will,” she promised, smiling, and they parted with perfect understanding, their minds pleasantly exercised and soothed by the exchange.

Reaching the subway station at Eleventh Street she paid her fare and was pleased to find a seat available. In the moment before the doors slammed shut, two men entered the car, one of them young, with a hard, suntanned face that almost matched the color of his trench coat, and who took a seat some distance away. The other, older man wore a dark, somewhat shabby suit and carried a small attaché case, and he sat down opposite her; glancing at him she gave a start, for she recognized him. Leaning forward she was about to call across the aisle to him when he lifted his head and looked directly at her and then through her, with not a trace of expression on his face.

At once Madame Karitska covered her movement by leaning down and retying a shoelace. When she straightened again she studied the man briefly and glanced away, but she was alert now, and thoughtful.

The train stopped at the next station and the man opposite her half rose, as if to leave, and then sank back. When he did this Madame Karitska noticed that farther down the car the man in the trench coat also made a move to leave and then aborted it. Seeing this she returned her glance to the impassive face across the aisle,
and this time he met her gaze and without expression they gazed at each other for a long moment.

At Fifteenth Street her friend in the shabby suit stood up, carrying his attaché case, and walked to the door to stand beside it as the train swayed to a halt. He was followed by the young man in the trench coat, but Madame Karitska saw him adroitly step aside to allow a woman to precede him, which placed him next to the younger man instead of in front of him. The doors slid open; the man with the attaché case walked out, hesitated and then stopped, allowing others to swarm past him.

Just as the doors began to close behind him he turned, looked back at Madame Karitska, and lifting his arm he threw his attaché case to her; she caught it in her lap just as the doors slammed shut. The last she saw of its owner he was hurrying toward the stairs to the street while the man in the trench coat stared back into the car, mouth slightly open, his eyes fixed on Madame Karitska. As the train picked up speed he turned and ran after the older man.

No one in the subway car appeared startled that Madame Karitska had been tossed a small attaché case by an apparent stranger. At the next station she left the train, and once above ground she signaled a cruising taxi: this was one time, she felt, when it was expedient not to be walking the streets, for unless Georges Verlag had changed his occupation since she had known him in Europe he had just tossed her an attaché case filled with diamonds.

Ten minutes later she regained her apartment and drew a sigh of relief. Placing the attaché case on her square coffee table she examined its several locks and nodded, reasonably sure now that Georges was still a diamond salesman, and that the case contained a delivery of jewels worth a hundred thousand dollars, if not more. Georges
had always been one of the best, as well as a good friend of her late husband, who had been a diamond merchant, and they had frequently entertained Georges in their Antwerp home. It had been a long time ago, but since she herself was now in America was it really so surprising that Georges, too, was here?

She thought a moment and then went to the phone and dialed police headquarters, asking for Lieutenant Pruden.

“He’s out,” said the desk sergeant. “Is this Madame Karitska?”

“Ah, Margolies,” she said, “what a good ear you have for voices. Yes, would you ask him to call me, please, when he returns? It’s quite important.”

“Righto,” said Margolies. “Your ESP working again? He’s out on a hit-and-run case, but—Hold on, he’s just walked in.”

A second later Pruden was greeting her warmly.

“Something has happened,” she said calmly, “so that I wonder if you could stop in here today at your convenience. I would have gone directly to the precinct if I could have been sure you were in, but—”