As Jessie entered the men’s room, two of the mythical Italians were coming out. “Atsa nice-a toilet,” the one Italian said.
The other said, “Clean. Clean as a baby’s bottom, that place.”
“Excuse me,” Jessie said, sliding by them.
“Sure-a, sure-a,” the one Italian said. He had sauce all over the front of his shirt and a strand of spaghetti on his lapel. Poor son-of-a-bitch.
In the men’s room, Jessie found the place was as clean as the Italians had said it was, all white porcelain and plastic and polished glass, six stalls off to one side, eight urinals out in the open, half a dozen sinks. He walked to one of the urinals and was about to use it when one of the stall doors opened behind him and someone said, “Blake?”
“Yes?” he asked, turning.
Medusa stood there, in a toga, her eyes boring into his, her hair not hair at all but a furious tangle of writhing snakes.
“Uh—” Jessie said.
“Not to worry,” she said, moving toward him. “It’s only temporary, darling, until we can get you out of the picture.”
As he turned to stone under the Medusa’s awful gaze, Jessie could think only two things: First, if he had not heard the legend of Medusa, didn’t know the myth well, she would not have affected him this way—for she only had the power to petrify those who were conversant with her story; second, he wondered what a woman was doing here in the men’s room.
Chapter Seven
In the office of Hell Hound Investigations, Helena and Brutus stood in the middle of Blake’s private room and watched the company robot move the furniture against the walls. Soundlessly, it hoisted the desk, chairs, the day bed, and shoved them out of the way, then came back to stand dutifully in front of the hound, waiting for further instructions.
“Do you think this will work?” Helena asked.
“It’ll work,” Brutus told her. To the robot, he said, “That’s all for now. Please retire to the waiting room—far enough away so your audio receivers can’t hear us.”
The robot clanked out of the room, closing the door behind it.
“You don’t trust him?” Helena asked.
Brutus said, “Anything a robot hears is stored in its microdot memories. It can be subpoenaed in court, and that might be disasterous.”
“Is what we’re doing illegal?” Helena asked.
“It may be, depending on how it develops,” Brutus said. He looked up at her and said, “You want to leave, too?”
“Oh, no!” she said. “I’d do anything to help get Blakesy back.”
The hound tilted its head. “Blakesy?”
Helena smiled. “I sometimes call him that, in private, when it’s just the two of us.”
“Christ,” Brutus said.
“I didn’t know you could use words like that.”
“They don’t bother me,” the hound said.
She clapped her hands together as if she were making a starting signal, and she said, “Where do we begin?”
“I had the robot put all the stuff out for you,” Brutus said, crossing the room to a black, enameled tray filled with instruments. “First, I want you to fit a piece of chalk to that string compass and draw a big circle in the middle of the floor.”
“How big?” Helena asked, picking up the tool and the chalk, biting her full lips prettily as she tried to slip the white stick into the proper clamp.
“A three foot radius ought to do it,” the hound said.
She got on her hands and knees, her skirt riding up behind, and she crawled around the room, outlining the circle. “There!” she said, when she was done, beaming as if she’d created a work of art.
“Now, draw a smaller circle,” Brutus said. “A foot and a half diameter, due north of the circle you just finished.”
“I don’t see how this will get Jessie back,” she said.
“You’ll see,” Brutus said.
She drew the second circle.
“You know what a pentagram is?” the hound asked.
“Sure.”
“Draw a pentagram inside each circle, with the points touching the circle walls.”
She needed a couple of minutes to do this, but when she was done, the pentagrams were tucked neatly inside the circles, never overlapping at any point, a detail Brutus had made sure of.