"Sardine! Sardine!" bellowed A. H. Baynes. "You get your fat ass in here."
Ban Sar Din stepped into his former office from his current home in the garage.
"What the hell is that racket out there?" Baynes demanded.
"It is Saturday. People in this city celebrate many strange things. Today they celebrate Saturday."
"How the hell do they expect a man to get any work done?" Baynes said.
They stopped talking as they heard an insistent rapping at the front door.
"Why don't you go answer that?" Baynes said, and Ban Sar Din returned a few minutes later holding a brown envelope.
"Messenger," he said. "It is for me. It is addressed to the leader of the ashram."
"Hand it over," Baynes said. He tore the envelope from the Indian's hand.
"Why are you so belligerent today,. Mr. Baynes?" asked Ban Sar Din.
"Because I'm wondering about you," Baynes said. "I just don't know how devoted you are to Kaii, and I think maybe you're just in this for the money."
"It is not so," Ban Sar Din said stiffly. "I will have you know that I was worshiping Kali when you were decorating Christmas trees in your home."
"We'll see," Baynes said. "We'll see."
When Ban Sar Din left the office, Baynes opened the envelope and found a typewritten message:
Meet me at the Orleans Cafe at three o'clock. You will recognize me. The meeting will benefit you greatly.
The note was not signed, and Baynes said, "Usual nut," and tossed the paper away. He kept working all morning, but he was unable to totally forget the note. Something kept pulling his mind back to it, something subtle yet powerful. Several hours later he picked it out of the wastebasket and studied it.
The paper was of high quality, densely woven and difficult to tear, and its edges were lined with gold. But Baynes realized that that was not what had attracted him. It was something else.
Experimentally he held the letter to his nose. A sickly-sweet aroma, faint but compelling, held him suspended out of time for a moment. He clutched the letter tightly and ran into the empty sanctuary and pressed his face against the statue of Kali. It was there too. The same smell. He checked his watch. It was 2:51.
The streets of New Orleans looked like a dress rehearsal for Mardi Gras, and the Orleans Cafe was crowded with people in garish costumes. You will recognize me, the message had read. Baynes searched the clientele, which seemed made up mostly of large hairy men dressed as women.
He noticed a lean young transvestite wearing Dracula makeup eyeing him steadily.
"Do you know me?" Baynes asked.
"Depends," the creature said. "You into getting your tongue tattooed?"
Baynes slipped away and had almost reached the door when he saw someone sitting alone near a window. The someone was covered from head to foot in a costume of stone gray. Its head was adorned by a cap of rhinestones. Its face was a garish painted mask. It had eight arms.
"Of course," Baynes said. "Kali."
The person at the table nodded to him, and one of the hands, covered by thick gray gloves, beckoned to him. He sat down across from the uncanny replica of the statue.
"I knew it would be you who came," the person in the costume whispered. There was no hint of gender in the voice, no characteristics to mark it as male or female.
"How did you know?" Baynes asked. He had to lean forward to hear the answer.
"Because you are the true leader of the cult of the Thuggees. You control the members. You may do as you wish."
Baynes sat back and asked, "What do you want?"
"Kali," the statue whispered.
"Sorry. The statue's not for sale." He began to rise.
"One million dollars."
He sat back down. "Why so much?"
"That is my offer."
"How do I know I can trust you? I haven't even seen your face. I don't know if you're a man or a woman."
"You will learn in time. And to trust me, you need only test me."
"Test you? How?"
The statue took a pen and wrote a telephone number on a cocktail napkin. "Memorize this," it whispered. As Baynes looked at the number, the person said, "Call anytime. One favor. Anything. It is yours." Then the statue burned the napkin over a candle on the table, stood up, and left.
Chapter Fifteen
Numbers 129 and 130.
Mr. Dirk Johnson of Alameda, Illinois, squeezed his wife's hand as they stepped off the Europa L-1011 jetliner into the futuristic grandeur of Charles de Gaulle Airport.
"This'll make up for the honeymoon we never had," he said, smiling proudly. "I bet your daddy would never have believed we'd be standing here in Paris, France, one day," Johnson said.
"I always knew you better than he did," Mrs. Johnson said, pecking him on the cheek. "Isn't the hotel supposed to send a bus to pick us up or something?"
"Excuse me," a bright-eyed young woman interrupted. "If you need a ride, my friends and I are going right into the city. Can we give you a lift?"
"Now, isn't that nice, Dirk?" Mrs. Johnson said. "You know, well, it's really nice." She wanted to say a lot of things about there being so many nice young people today who contradicted the rebel-teenager stereotype, but she thought she might sound gushy.
"We'd be obliged, miss," Johnson said.
"I don't see the hotel bus anywhere."
"Believe me, it'll be our pleasure," the young woman said brightly. "Here's our car."
Mrs. Johnson noticed the twisted yellow handkerchiefs around the necks of the clean, good-looking young folks. "Don't you look nice," she said. "Are you students?"
"More like a club," the young woman said as the automatic door locks clicked the car's doors shut. "These rumals are our insignia."
"Isn't that sweet? Kind of like the Scouts."
"We'd like you both to have one," the girl said.
"Oh, no. We couldn't-"
"Please. It'll make our day. Here, just slip it around your neck. You, too. . . ."
Number 131, 132, and 133.
Samantha Hall and Roderick Van Cleef explained to the chauffeur that if he couldn't do his job, he could find another.
"But the car was running perfectly just minutes ago," the French driver said, with a touch of that French arrogance that wonders what it is doing even talking to lesser people, much less apologizing to them.
"Well, that obviously isn't the case now," Samantha drawled, spinning her Oscar de la Renta cape dramatically about her shoulders.
"What a bore," Roderick said with a sigh.
"It's all your fault, Roddy. If we had flown the Concorde . . ."
"What's that got to do with this? Besides, the Concorde's as uncomfortable as ballet shoes."
"We could have chartered a plane, then," Samantha said.
"For a bloody weekend?"
"My last lover did," Samantha said.
"Your last lover was too fat to fit into the seat of a commercial jet."
"She was not," Samantha said. "And anyway-"
"Pardon me, but I see you're having some car trouble," said a young man with a yellow handkerchief in his pocket. "May I give you a lift?"
"Roddy, have this person arrested," Samantha snapped.
"Why? He's offering us a ride."
"In a Chevrolet," Samantha hissed. "And he's wearing polyester. You don't want me seen with someone in a polyester jacket, do you?"
"Frankly, I wouldn't give a damn if he were wearing fig leaves. Look at the taxi line."
"Actually, the car's quite comfortable," the eager young man said with an engaging grin.
Samantha heaved a great sigh. "All right. My weekend's already ruined anyway. I might as well turn it into a total fiasco. Bring on the Chevrolet."
She stepped haughtily toward the blue American sedan. Another young man smiled at her from the front seat. He was holding a yellow handkerchief in his hands.