Gods and Pawns (38 page)

There was a pause. I think she was waiting for me to demand in astonishment how she’d known it was me, but instead I inquired: “Where’s your new dog?”

“Still in Mr. Hearst’s kennels,” she replied, with a proud lift of her head. “Dear Mr. Hearst is having a traveling basket made for her. Such a kind man!”

“He’s a swell guy, all right,” I agreed.

“And just as generous in this life as in his others,” she went on. “But, you know, being a Caesar taught him that. Ruling the Empire either ennobled a man or brought out his worst vices. Clearly, our host was one of those on whom the laurel crown conferred refinement. Of course, he is a very old soul.”

“No kidding?”

“Oh, yes. He has come back many, many times. Many are the names he has borne: Pharaoh, and Caesar, and High King,” Mrs. Bryce told me, in as matter-of-fact a voice as though she was listing football trophies. “He has much work to do on this plane of existence, you see. Of course, you may well wonder how I know these things.”

“Gee, Mrs. Bryce, how do you know these things?” I asked, just to be nice.

“It is my gift,” she said, with a little sad smile, and she sighed. “My gift and my curse, you see. The spirits whisper to me constantly. I described this terrible and wonderful affliction in my novel
Black Covenant
, which of course was based on one of my own past lives.”

“I don’t think I’ve read that one,” I admitted.

“A sad tale, as so many of them are,” she said, sighing again. “In the romantic Scottish Highlands of the thirteenth century, a beautiful young girl discovers she has an uncanny ability to sense both past and future lives of everyone she meets. Her gift brings inevitable doom upon her, of course. She finds her long-lost love, who was a soldier under Mark Antony when she was one of Cleopatra’s handmaidens, and is now a gallant highwayman—I mean her lover, of course—and, sensing his inevitable death on the gallows, she dares to die with him.”

“That’s sad, all right,” I agreed. “How’d it sell?”

“It was received by the discerning public with their customary sympathy,” Mrs. Bryce replied.

“Is that the one they’re doing a screenplay on?” I inquired.

“No,” she said, looking me up and down. “That’s
Passionate Girl
, the story of Mary, Queen of Scots, told from the unique perspective of her faithful terrier. I may yet persuade Miss Garbo to accept the lead role But, Mr. Denham—I am sensing something about you. Wait. You work in the film industry—”

“Yeah, for Louis B. Mayer,” I said.

“And yet—and yet—” She took a step back and shaded her eyes as she looked at me. “I sense more. You cast a long shadow, Mr. Denham. Why—you, too, are an old soul!”

“Oh yeah?” I said, scanning her critically for Crome’s radiation. Was she one of those mortals with a fluky electromagnetic field? They tend to receive data other mortals don’t get, the way some people pick up radio broadcasts with tooth fillings, because their personal field bleeds into the temporal wave. I couldn’t sense anything out of the ordinary in Mrs. Bryce, though. Was she buttering me up because she thought I could talk Garbo into starring in
Passionate Girl
at MGM? Well, she didn’t know much about my relationship with Greta.

“Yes—yes—I see you in the Mediterranean area—I see you dueling with a band of street youths—is it in Venice, in the time of the Doges? Yes. And before that…I see you in Egypt, Mr. Denham, during the captivity of the Israelites. You loved a girl…yet there was another man, an overseer…” Conqueror Worm might be able to tell there was something different about me, but his mistress was scoring a big metaphysical zero.

“Really?”

“Yes,” she said, lowering her eyes from the oak tree above us, where she had apparently been reading all this stuff. “Do you experience disturbing visions, Mr. Denham? Dreams, perhaps of other places, other times?”

“Yeah, actually,” I couldn’t resist saying.

“Ah. If you desire to seek further—I may be able to help you.” She came close and put her hand on my arm. Conqueror Worm prowled around her ankles, whining like a gnat. “I have some experience in, shall we say, arcane matters? It wouldn’t be the first time I have assisted a questing soul in unraveling the mystery of his past lives. Indeed, you might almost call me a detective…for I sense you enjoy the works of Mr. Dashiell Hammett,” she finished, with a smile as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa.

I smiled right back at her. Conqueror Worm put his tail between his legs and howled.

“Gosh, Mrs. Bryce, that’s really amazing,” I said, reaching for her hand and shaking it. “I do like detective fiction.” And there was no way she could have known it unless she’d been in my room going through my drawers, where she’d have seen my well-worn copy of
The Maltese Falcon.
“Did your spirits tell you that?”

“Yes,” she said modestly, and she was lying through her teeth, if her skin conductivity and pulse were any indication. Lewis was right, you see: we can tell as much as a polygraph about whether or not a mortal is truthful.

“You don’t say?” I let go her hand. “Well, well. This has been really interesting, Mrs. Bryce. I’ve got to go see how my friend is doing now, but, you know, I’d really like to get together to talk with you about this again. Soon.”

“Ah! Your friend with the fair hair,” she said, and looked wise. Then she stepped in close and lowered her voice. “The haunted one. Tell me, Mr. Denham…is he…inclined to the worship of Apollo?”

For a moment I was struck speechless, because Lewis does go on sometimes about his Roman cultural identity, but then I realized that wasn’t what Mrs. Bryce was implying.

“You mean, is he a homo?”

“Given to sins of the purple and crimson nature,” she rephrased, nodding.

Now I knew she had the Valentino script, had seen Rudy’s cute note and leaped to her own conclusion. “Uh…gee. I don’t know. I guess he might be. Why?”

“There is a male spirit who will not rest until he communicates with your friend,” Mrs. Bryce told me, breathing heavily. “A fiery soul with a great attachment to Mr. Kensington. One who has but recently passed over. A beautiful shade, upright as a smokeless flame.”

The only question now was, why? One thing was certain: whether or not Lewis had ever danced the tango with Rudolph Valentino, Mrs. Bryce sure wished she had. Was she planning some stunt to impress the hell out of all these movie people, using her magic powers to reveal the script’s whereabouts if Lewis reported it missing?

“I wonder who it is?” I said. “I’ll tell him about it. Of course, you know, he might be kind of embarrassed—”

“But of course.” She waved gracefully, as though dismissing all philistine considerations of closets. “If he will speak to me privately, I can do him a great service.”

“O.K., Mrs. Bryce,” I said, winking, and we went our separate ways through the garden.

I caught up with Lewis in the long pergola, tottering along between the kumquat trees. His tie was askew, his hair was standing on end, and his eyes shone like a couple of blue klieg lights.

“The most incredible thing just happened to me,” he said.

“How’d you make out with Garbo?” I inquired, and then my jaw dropped, because he drew himself up and said, with an effort at dignity:

“I’ll thank you not to speculate on a lady’s private affairs.”

“Oh, for crying out loud!” I hoped he’d had the sense to stay out of the range of the surveillance cameras.

“But I can tell you this much,” he said, as his silly grin burst through again, “she absolutely did not steal my Valentino script.”

“Yeah, I know,” I replied. “Cartimandua Bryce took it after all.”

“She—Really?” Lewis focused with difficulty. “However did you find out?”

“We were talking just now and she gave the game away.” I explained. “Oldest trick in the book, for fake psychics: snoop through people’s belongings in secret so you know little details about them you couldn’t have known otherwise, then pull ’em out in conversation and wow everybody with your mystical abilities.

“What do you want to bet that’s what she was doing when she sneaked out of the theater? She must have used the time to case people’s rooms. That’s how the damn dog got in our suite. It must have followed her somehow and gotten left behind.”

“How sordid,” Lewis said. “How are we going to get it back, then?”

“We’ll think of a way,” I said. “I have a feeling she’ll approach you herself, anyhow. She’s dying to corner you and give you a big wet kiss from the ghost of Rudolph Valentino, who she thinks is your passionate dead boyfriend. You just play along.”

Lewis winced. “That’s revolting.”

I shrugged. “So long as you get the script back, who cares what she thinks?”

“I care,” Lewis protested. “I have a reputation to think about!”

“Like the opinions of a bunch of mortals are going to matter in a hundred years!” I said. “Anyway, I’ll bet you’ve had to do more embarrassing things in the Company’s service. I know I have.”

“Such as?” Lewis demanded sullenly.

“Such as I don’t care to discuss just at the present time,” I told him, flouncing away with a grin. He grabbed a pomegranate and hurled it at me, but I winked out and reappeared a few yards off, laughing. The lunch bell rang.

I don’t know what Lewis did with the rest of his afternoon, but I suspect he spent it hiding. Myself, I took things easy; napped in the sunlight, went swimming in the Roman pool, and relaxed in the guest library with a good book. By the time we gathered in the assembly hall for cocktail hour again, I was refreshed and ready for a long night’s work.

The gathering was a lot more fun now that I wasn’t so nervous about Mr. Hearst. Connie got out a Parcheesi game and we sat down to play with Charlie and Laurence. The Hearst kid and his girlfriend took over one of the pianos and played amateurish duets. Mrs. Bryce made a sweeping entrance and backed Gable into a corner, trying out her finder-of-past-lives routine on him. Marion circulated for a while, before getting into a serious discussion of real estate investments with Jack from Paramount. Mr. Hearst came down in the elevator and was promptly surrounded by his executives, who wanted to discuss business. Garbo appeared late, smiling to herself as she wandered over to the other piano and picked out tunes with one finger.

Lewis skulked in at the last moment, just as we were all getting up to go to dinner, and tried to look as though he’d been there all along. The ladies went in first. As she passed him, Garbo reached out and tousled his hair, though she didn’t say a word.

The rest of us—Mr. Hearst included—gaped at Lewis. He just straightened up, threw his shoulders back, and swaggered into the dining hall after the ladies.

My place card was immediately at Mr. Hearst’s right, and Lewis was seated on the other side of me. It didn’t get better than this. I looked nearly as smug as Lewis as I sat down with my loaded plate. Cartimandua Bryce had been given the other place of honor, though, at Marion’s right, I guess as a further consolation prize for the loss of Tcho-Tcho. Conqueror Worm was allowed to stay in her lap through the meal this time. He took one look at me and cringed down meek as a lamb, only lifting his muzzle for the tidbits Mrs. Bryce fed him.

She held forth on the subject of reincarnation as we dined, with Marion drawing her out and throwing the rest of us an occasional broad wink, though not when Hearst was looking. He had very strict ideas about courtesy toward guests, even if he clearly thought she was a crackpot.

“So what you’re saying is, we just go on and on through history, the same people coming back time after time?” Marion inquired.

“Not all of us,” Mrs. Bryce admitted. “Some, I think, are weaker souls and fade after the first thundering torrent of life has finished with them. They are like those who retire from the ball after but one dance, too weary to respond any longer to the fierce call of life’s music.”

“They just soita go ova to da punchbowl and stay there, huh?” said Connie.

“In a sense,” Mrs. Bryce told her, graciously ignoring her teasing tone. “The punchbowl of Lethe, if you will; and there they imbibe forgetfulness and remain. Ah, but the stronger souls plunge back headlong into the maelstrom of mortal passions!”

“Well, but what about going to Heaven and all that stuff?” Marion wanted to know. “Don’t we ever get to do that?”

“Oh, undoubtedly,” Mrs. Bryce replied, “for there are higher astral planes beyond this mere terrestrial one we inhabit. The truly great souls ascend there in time, as that is their true home; but even they yield to the impulse to assume flesh and descend to the mundane realms again, especially if they have important work to do here.” She inclined across the table to Hearst. “As I feel
you
have often done, dear Mr. Hearst.”

“Well, I plan on coming back after this life, anyhow,” he replied with a smile, and nudged me under the table. I nearly dropped my fork.

“I don’t know that I’d want to,” said Marion a little crossly. “My g-goodness, I think I’d rather have a nice rest afterwards, and not come back and have to go fighting through the whole darned business all over again.”

Hearst lifted his head and regarded her for a long moment.

“Wouldn’t you, dear?” he said.

“N-no,” Marion insisted, and laughed. “It’d be great to have some peace and quiet for a change.”

Mrs. Bryce just nodded, as though to show that proved her point. Hearst looked down at his plate and didn’t say anything else for the moment.

“But anyway, Mrs. Bryce,” Marion went on in a brighter voice, “who else do you think’s an old soul? What about the world leaders right now?”

“Chancellor Hitler, certainly,” Mrs. Bryce informed us. “One has only to look at the immense dynamism of the man! This, surely, was a Teutonic Knight, or perhaps one of the barbarian chieftains who defied Caesar.”

“Unsuccessfully,” said Hearst in a dry little voice.

“Yes, but to comprehend reincarnation is to see history in its true light,” Mrs. Bryce explained. “Over the centuries his star has risen inexorably, and will continue to rise. He is a man with true purpose.”

“You don’t feel that way about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, do you?” Hearst inquired.