“Yes. Runi Sarif is his real name. He has hounded me out of Norway, Ireland and Canada—wherever I try to reestablish the Cult of Hagar.”
Fitzgerald looked away. “I suppose,” he said matter-of-factly, “you have lots of secret enemies plotting against you.”
Kazam surprised him with a burst of rich laughter. “I have been investigated too often,” grinned the Persian, “not to recognize that one. You think I’m mad.”
“No,” mumbled the detective, crestfallen. “I just wanted to find out Anybody running a nut cult’s automatically reserved a place in Bellevue.”
“Forget it, sir. I spit on the Cult of Hagar. It is my livelihood, but I know better than any man that it is a mockery. Do you know what our highest mystery is? The Ineluctable Modality.” Kazam sneered.
“That’s Joyce,” said Fitzgerald with, a ^rin. “You have a sense of humor, Mr. Kazam. That’s a rare thing in the religious.”
“Please,” said Joseph Kazam. “Don’t call me that. I am not worthy—the noble, sincere men who work for their various faiths are my envy. I have seen too much to be one of them.”
“Go on,” said Fitzgerald, leaning forward. He read books, this detective, and dearly loved an abstract discussion.
The Persian hesitated. “I,” he said at length, “am an occult engineer. I am a man who can make the hidden forces work.”
“Like staring a leprechaun in the eye till he finds you a pot of gold?” suggested the detective with a chuckle.
“One manifestation,” said Kazam calmly. “Only one.”
“Look,” said Fitzgerald. “They still have that room in Belle-
vue. Don’t say that in publip—stick to the Ineluctable Modality if you know what’s good for you.”
“Tut,” said the Persian regretfully. “He’s working on you.”
The detective looked around the room. “Meaning who?” he demanded.
“Runi Sarif. He’s trying to reach your mind and turn you against me.”
“Balony,” said Fitzgerald coarsely. “You get yourself registered as a religion hi twenty-four hours; then find yourself a place to live. I’ll hold off any charges of fraud for a while. Just watch your step.” He jammed a natty Homburg down over his sandy hair and strode pugnaciously from the office.
Joseph Kazman sighed. Obviously the detective had been disappointed.
That night, hi his bachelor’s flat, Fitzgerald tossed and turned uneasily on his modern bed. Being blessed with a sound digestion able to cope even with a steady diet of chain-restaurant food and the soundest of consciences, the detective was agitated profoundly by his wakefulness.
Being, like all bachelors, a cautious man, he hesitated to dose himself with the veronal he kept for occasions like this, few and far between though they were. Finally, as he heard the locals pass one by one on the El a few blocks away and then heard the first express of the morning, with its higher-pitched bickering of wheels and quicker vibration against the track, he stumbled from bed and walked dazedly into his bathroom, fumbled open the medicine chest
Only when he had the bottle and had shaken two pills into his hand did he think to turn on the light. He pulled the cord and dropped the pills hi horror. They weren’t the veronal at all but an old prescription which he had thriftily kept till they might be of use again.
Two would have been a fatal overdose. Shakily Fitzgerald filled a glass of water and drank it down, spilling about a third on his pajamas. He replaced the pills and threw away the entire bottle. You never know when a thing like that might happen again, he thought—too late to mend.
Now thoroughly sure that he needed the sedative, he swallowed a dose. By the time he had replaced the bottle he could scarcely find his way back to the bed, so sleepy was he.
He dreamed then. Detective Fitzgerald was standing on a plain, a white plain, that was very hot. His feet were bare. In
the middle distance was a stone tower above which circled winged skulls—bat-winged skulls, whose rattling and flapping he could plainly hear.
From the plain—he realized then that it was a desert of fine, white sand—spouted up little funnels or vortices of fog in a circle around bun. He began to run very slowly, much slower than he wanted to. He thought he was running away from the tower and the vortices, but somehow they continued to stay in his field of vision. No matter where he swerved the tower was always hi front and the little twisters around him. The circle was growing smaller around him, and he redoubled his efforts to escape.