Black and Blue Magic Read Online Free PDF

meeting you, Mr. ... Mr. ... He looked down trying to make out the printing on the card in his hand.
    “Mazzeeck,” the man said. “Tarzack Mazzeeck. Forever at your service.” He stood up bracing himself against the weight of the heavy suitcase.
    “Well, good-by, Mr. Mazzeeck. Be seeing you.”
    As Harry started off on the long walk home, he kept thinking about the odd little man. There had been something so unusual about him that it almost seemed now as if he really didn’t exist. Harry felt as if the whole thing could have been another silly dream—except of course, this time it hadn’t. It had really happened and only a few minutes before, too.
    Maybe the whole thing had something to do with the air being “heavy with possibilities,” Harry thought—not seriously, of course, but just sort of fooling around with the idea. For instance, what if there was a possibility that the guy was a billionaire in disguise and the suitcase had been full of his most valuable business papers. Maybe tomorrow Harry would get a letter with a million dollars reward in it.
    It was a great idea, but Harry knew it was a dumb one. For one thing, papers, no matter how valuable, couldn’t have weighed that much. And besides, Harry couldn’t help feeling that, if the little man really were in disguise, he was hiding something more than the fact that he was just a common billionaire.

Hot Water and Hysterics
    H ARRY WALKED AND WALKED and walked—past dinner time and sundown and twilight. It was almost dark when his aching feet carried him through the gate and around to the back door of the boarding house. The front door was a few steps closer, but some of the guests were usually in the living room in the evenings; and in case Mom was mad, he’d just as soon give her a chance to bawl him out in the privacy of the kitchen. He was hoping that she wasn’t too mad and wondering if she’d saved him any dinner, when he opened the back door and got the shock of his life.
    Mom was sitting at the kitchen table with her head in her hands and she was crying. Mom never cried—not that Harry ever knew about, anyway. When she heard Harry, she raised her head and started to brush the tears away with the back of her hands.
    Harry felt awful. “Hey Mom,” he said. “Don’t do that. I’m sorry I’m late. It really wasn’t my fault.”
    Mom sniffed and smiled, but the smile wobbled and so did her voice. “Oh, it’s not that,” she said. “I knew what happened to you. Mike came over and told me. He said he thought you were out of money and would probably have to walk home. It wasn’t that at all.”
    “Well, what was it then? What happened?”
    “It was the water heater.” Mom took out a handkerchief and blew her nose. “It was the water heater ... and Miss Thurgood,” she added in a quavery voice that ended up in a sob and then, all of a sudden, turned into a giggle
    Harry was alarmed. It was beginning to look as if Mom was cracking up, right before his eyes. But just about then, Mom quit giggling and started acting like a normal mother again.
    “I’m sorry to act so silly, Harry,” she said. “But you just can’t imagine what’s been going on here. Right after dinner I was sitting in the front room talking to Mrs. Pusey. Miss Thurgood had just gone upstairs to take her bath. You know how she is about her bath.”
    Harry knew Miss Thurgood’s baths, all right. She always took them early because she liked to use lots of hot water and soak for a long time. Miss Thurgood’s bath was another subject that Harry and Mr. Brighton made up jokes about. Mr. Brighton said he bet she was soaking herself in vinegar, because she was in training to become a pickle.
    “Anyway,” Mom went on, “all of a sudden she called from the bathroom and said there wasn’t any hot water. I called back that I’d check the water heater. You know it hasn’t been too reliable lately. When I got to the kitchen, I found the whole floor flooded. The water