Extracting herself unnoticed from the car took some doing, but the attendants and guards paid no attention to the elevator doors opening and closing on no one (who could predict the vagaries of empty elevators?) and Hawksquill walked out into the lobby, going carefully in the company of the visible so as not to brush against them. The usual unsmiling raincoated men stood at intervals along the walls or sat in lobby armchairs behind dummy newspapers, fooling no one, being fooled by no one but she. At an unseen signal, they began to change their stations just then, like pieces on a board. A large party was coming through the swift-bladed revolving doors, preceded by underlings. Not a moment too soon, Hawksquill thought, for this was the Noisy Bridge Rod and Gun Club proceeding into the lobby. They didn’t gaze around themselves inquiringly as ordinary men might on entering such a place, but, spreading out slightly as though more fully to take possession here, they kept their eyes ahead, seeing the future and not the transitory forms of the present. Under each arm was the glove-soft case, on each head the potent homburg long ridiculous on any but men like these.
They sorted themselves into two elevators, those with the highest standing holding the doors for the others, as ancient male ritual dictates; Hawksquill slipped into the less crowded one.
“The thirteenth?”
“The thirteenth.”
Someone punched the button for the thirteenth floor with a forceful forefinger. Another consulted a plain wristwatch. They ascended smoothly. They had nothing to say to one another; their plans were made, and the walls, they well knew, had ears. Hawksquill remained pressed against the door, facing their blank faces. The doors opened, and neatly she sidled out; just in time too, for there were hands thrust forward to take the hands of the club members.
“The Lecturer will be right with you.”
“If you could wait in this room.”
“Can we order anything up for you. The Lecturer has ordered coffee.”
They were shepherded leftward by alert suited men. One or two young men, in colored blouses, hands clasped behind them in an uneaseful at-ease, stood by every door. At least, Hawksquill thought, he’s wary. From another elevator a red-coated waiter came out carrying a large tray which bore a single tiny cup of coffee. He went rightwards, and Hawksquill followed him. He was admitted through double doors and past guards, and so was Hawksquill at his heels; he came up to an unmarked door, knocked, opened it, and went in. Hawksquill put an invisible foot in the door as he closed it behind him, and then slipped in.
Needle in the Haystack of Time
It was an impersonally-furnished sitting-room with wide windows looking out over the spiky city. The waiter, muttering to himself, passed Hawksquill and exited. Hawksquill took the fragment of bone from her mouth and was carefully putting it away when a farther door opened and Russell Eigenblick came out, yawning, in a blackish, bedragoned silk dressing-gown. He wore on his nose a pair of tiny half-glasses which Hawksquill hadn’t seen before.
He started when he saw her, having expected an empty room.
“You,” he said.
Without much grace (she couldn’t remember ever having done quite this before), Hawksquill lowered herself onto one knee, bowed profoundly, and said, “I am your Majesty’s humble servant.”
“Get up,” Eigenblick said. “Who let you in here?”
“A black cat,” Hawksquill said, rising. “It doesn’t matter. We haven’t much time.”
“I don’t talk to journalists.”
“I’m sorry,” Hawksquill said. “That was an imposition. I’m not a journalist.”
“I thought not!” he said, triumphantly. He snatched the spectacles from his face as though he had just remembered they were there. He moved toward an intercom on the phony Louis Quatorze desk.
“Wait,” Hawksquill said. “Tell me this. Do you want, after eight hundred years of sleep, to fail in your enterprise?”
He turned slowly to regard her.
“You must remember,” Hawksquill went on, “how once you were abased before a certain Pope, and were forced to hold his stirrup, and run beside his horse.”
Eigenblick’s face was suffused. It grew a bright red different from the red of his beard. He rifled fury at Hawksquill from his eagle eyes. “Who are you?” he said.
“At this moment,” Hawksquill said, gesturing toward the farther end of the suite, “men await you who intend to abase you in just such a degree. Only more cleverly. So that you will never notice being clipped. I mean the Noisy Bridge Rod and Gun Club. Or have they presented themselves to you under some other name?”
“Nonsense,” Eigenblick said. “I’ve never heard of this so-called club.” But his eyes clouded; perhaps, somewhere, somewhen, he had been warned… “And what could you mean about the Pope? A charming gentleman who I’ve never met.” His eyes not meeting hers, he picked up his little coffee and drank it off.
But she had him: she saw that. If he didn’t ring to have guards eject her, he would listen. “Have they promised you high position?” she asked.
“The highest,” he said after a long pause, gazing out the window.
“It might interest you to know that for some years those gentlemen have employed me on various errands. I think I know them. Was it the Presidency?”
He said nothing. It was.
“The Presidency,” Hawksquill said, “is no longer an office. It’s a room. A nice one, but only a room. You must refuse it. Politely. And any other blandishments they may offer. I’ll explain your next moves later…”
He turned on her. “How is it you know these things?” he said. “How do you know me?”
Hawksquill returned his gunlike look with one of her own, and said, in her best wizard’s manner, “There is much that I know.”
The intercom buzzed. Eigenblick went to it, looked thoughtfully at the array of bottons on it, finger to his lips, and then punched one. Nothing happened. He pushed another, and a voice made of static spoke: “Everything is ready, sir.”
“Ja,” Eigenblick said. “Moment.” He released the button, realized he hadn’t been heard, pressed another, and repeated himself. He turned to Hawksquill. “However it is you’ve found out these things,” he said, “you have obviously not found out all. You see,” he went on, a broad smile on his face and his eyes cast upward with the look of one confident of his election, “I’m in the cards. Nothing that can happen to me can deflect a destiny set elsewhere long ago. Protected. All this was meant to be.”
“Your Majesty,” Hawksquill said, “perhaps I haven’t made myself clear…”
“Will you stop calling me that!” he said, furious.
“Sorry. Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear. I know very well that you are in the cards—a deck of very pretty ones, with trumps at least obstensibly designed to foretell and encourage the return of your old Empire; designed and drawn, I would guess, some time in the reign of Rudolf II, and printed in Prague. They have been put to other uses since. Without your being, so to speak, any the less in them.”