The house dick sighed. “Come to think of it, I guess nobody. Come to think of it, I won’t be here to care.”
The fat man said: “A thousand years from now, they’ll remember me. Because astronomers will still be studying the heavens with their telescopes. They’ll see my comet, and they’ll say to themselves: ‘Hello, here’s McGuffey’s Comet, rising three degrees ahead of A Cygni, right where Joseph J. McGuffey first located it away back in 1946!’ ”
O’Hanna raised an eyebrow. “The thing becomes a kind of traveling tombstone in the sky with your name engraved on it?”
McGuffey saw no humor in the suggestion. He said solemly: “Yes. And that isn’t all. It’s a great feather in an amateur observer’s cap to have a comet named after him. Many a man has spent a lifetime without ever making such a discovery. I’ve been watching for twenty-five years myself. Charley Zane is a newcomer and a novice. He only took up this hobby in the last few years, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him steal this comet from me!”
The house dick nodded: “I see how you feel about it. By the way, how does a guy go about hijacking somebody else’s comet?”
The fat man tossed down the last swallow of his highball, slid his plump legs from the bar stool. He said grimly: “I don’t know how the damned crook is going to try it, but I’m sure as hell going to stop him.”
O’Hanna stepped into the manager’s teak-paneled office, picked out a World Almanac from a pile of books on Endicott’s desk.
The thin-faced, graying Endicott peered up, puzzled.
O’Hanna said: “Coincidences are beginning to pile on coincidences. I’ve been doing a little research in astronomy. It turns out that Spica is the name of a star three hundred light-years distant from us. Now, isn’t that fascinating?”
Endicott didn’t think so. He said: “Good Lord, Mike, that’s probably the most trivial detail you ever wasted my time telling me.”
O’Hanna protested: “Where’s your imagination, man? Just think of it. Three hundred light-years means a ray of light started on its way to us when the pilgrim fathers were still alive. It was still umpteen billions of miles away when Mr. McGuffey took up the hobby of star-gazing. It must have been just about that time that Spica Zane was born and named after the same star, because Spica is a name her parents couldn’t have picked out of religion, history, or thin air.”
Endicott blinked. He frowned. He said: “Well, what of it?”
“I’m asking myself.” O’Hanna frowned, too. “McGuffey says Charley Zane is a mere newcomer and a novice in the game. For my money, though, there’s a tie-up going back to the time that girl was born. I’d like to dig into the family history of the McGuffeys and the Zanes. I’m boiling over with questions to ask those guys.”
Endicott took alarm. He cried: “Mike, you mustn’t! I absolutely forbid it!”
“You don’t want me to unveil the family skeleton?”
Endicott said: “Certainly not. It’s preposterous. Our guests’ private affairs are none of our business. People come to San Alpa for pleasure. They won’t stand for embarrassing questions about their pasts, and I don’t blame them.”
O’Hanna’s Irish-gray eyes narrowed. “That’s how you talk now. You’ll talk different when hell boils over on the premises. You’ll say then it was my job to head off the trouble before it could happen.”
Endicott sat back, straightened his spare shoulders. “There isn’t going to be any trouble. From what you’ve told me, this is merely a case of a couple of old fools squabbling over a silly comet. You’re acting as if some horrible crime had been committed.”
The house dick said: “No. I’m acting as if some horrible crime was going to happen. I’ve got a black Irish hunch there’s more to this setup than comet, comet, who’s got the comet.”
The manager scoffed. “Ridiculous! You’re being as absurd as those two idiots themselves!”
“You won’t back me up, then, if I ask them some personal questions?”
Endicott said: “I certainly will not. I’ll discharge you if I hear of you carrying on in any such high-handed fashion. It’s my duty to the stockholders to draw patronage to this hotel, not to annoy folks so they leave.”
O’Hanna was used to it. He said: “O.K., I just wanted to get it in the record. You’re telling me to lay off. It’s in your hands, and if it blows up, it’s your fingers that get burned.”
Endicott took fresh alarm. He said hastily: “Wait a minute, Mike. If you’re expecting trouble, naturally it’s up to you to keep an eye on developments. But you’ll have to work under cover. You mustn’t ask any bothersome questions of these folks.”
“Yeah? I’m supposed to go read the answers in the stars.” O’Hanna snapped his fingers. He said: “Hey, that might work. I’ll go ask Zane to show me his comet.”
He headed through the lobby, down the front steps across the landscaped grounds. Tonight was the kind of night Endicott’s publicity pamphlets boasted about — cool enough to sleep under blankets after the daytime California sun.
As O’Hanna blinked the lobby lights out of his eyes, the stars showed up like lamps over the pine and black oak treetops. O’Hanna came to a stop, legs braced wide, chin tilted high. Thinly, behind him, came the sounds of piano and saxophones in the Palomar Room. The music brought a picture of the crowded bar under the artificial moon, the dancers circling in the smoky haze under the electric, indoor stars. The Palomar Room seemed far away, and no great bargain.
Irish-gray eyes widening in the dark toward the great, jeweled constellations over his head, O’Hanna mused: “Zane’s right — that layout in there is phony. I’ll be damned if those amateur astronomers haven’t got something on—”
The shot tore his thought in two.
At the flat, wicked report, O’Hanna’s head came down, his stare raked toward the chalets scattered in the concealing trees.
Window-light glowed from a dozen different chalets down the slope. The shot might have sounded from any of them. It might have been out under the trees.
A woman’s scream sliced off a cut of shrill, high-pitched fear and horror.
O’Hanna’s bent elbow came up. Luminous hands on his stopwatch registered 9:20. He was coming up on his tiptoes, running, as the elbow pumped down. Footpaths looped and veined through the landscapery. O’Hanna took the bee-line route toward the scream, as straight as the trees would let him travel.
He didn’t see the other man in time. It was doubly dark under the trees whose boughs blotted out the starlight. O’Hanna hadn’t heard any warning, either. His own sprinting feet kicked up too much disturbance as they crushed pine needles and oak leaves.
The other man hadn’t seen or heard O’Hanna for the same reasons. He was just there in the way, squealing affrightedly, as the house dick came bearing down on him.
They crashed. O’Hanna skidded a yard, jumped up, dropped handfuls of pine needle and leaf mold. The other man lay still, whooshing for breath.
The house dick stooped, fanned the fellow’s angular form. He didn’t find a gun.
The man wailed: “D-don’t shoot again! My money’s in my hip pocket! Don’t kill me!”
O’Hanna yanked the other to his feet. He hadn’t brought a flashlight, and in the dark the man’s face was a long, narrow blur that didn’t add up to recognizable features.
O’Hanna said: “Relax, I’m the house detective. What happened here?”
“I... I don’t know! I heard a shot! Then a man came running at me with a great big shiny gun in his fist. I ran for my life.”
O’Hanna said: “Come on. Show me where.”
The man quavered: “Straight ahead — there.”