Monsters and Magicians Read Online Free PDF Page B

caffeine I'll never get to sleep tonight. No, I'll work on this cognac, I think. Would you care to join me?"
    Resuming her seat, she replied, with a slight shake of the head, "No, no cognac for me, thank you, but I will have a small glass of your excellent sherry, Pedro."
    With a nod, the dark man pushed back his chair, stood and crossed to his commodious liquor cabinet. Then, with a decanter poised over a slender, crystal sherry goblet, he inquired, "Dry or cream, Danna?"
    "Not cream, Pedro. Do you still have some of that amontillado?"
    When both were again seated, he waved at the clutter atop his desk. "Since you asked: no, not the McKiernans, they're in no real trouble and the agent they're dealing with is a gentleman who goes strictly by the book, young Khoury—reasonable, civil, understanding. No, I turned their case over to Murray.
    "But poor Belcher, he's another question entirely. Yes, he's made some mistakes and his halfwitted brother-in-law made some more and far worse ones, and that damned Henry Blutegel rode them so long and so brutally before they came to us that they're both terrified nervous wrecks. But if we can keep them from flipping out and impulsively admitting

    guilt to things they really didn't do or, at least, intend to do, my researches here tonight just may cost that Czech bastard this case.
    "And in regard to Blutegel, Danna: Has your private research project turned up anything interesting on him and his background?"
    The auburn-haired woman's lips became a grim line. "Heinrich Blutegel, a Displaced Person from Czechoslovakia, entered the United States in May of 1947 in company with his bride of twelve weeks, an American Red Cross worker nee Rachel Feingold. His new wife was a native of Kansas City, a registered nurse by profession and heiress of a modest inheritance. Blutegel was then in his mid-twenties— according to his records which, of course, were backed up solely by his sworn statements, his birthplace and former home village having been completely wiped out and destroyed by the Nazis in the course of the war—so she sent him to college and, by the time he had graduated with a degree in accounting in 1952, he had mastered English, speaking the completely unaccented, colloquial English that he uses today. Quite a feat for the unlettered Czech peasant he was supposed to be, Pedro."
    He nodded. "I'll say. He's not married, now; I once heard that he was divorced. Have you been able to contact or talk to his former wife, Danna?"
    She shook her head once. "Rachel Blutegel committed suicide in 1958, leaving no note and for no apparent reason. His second wife, a younger cousin of Rachel's whom he first met at the funeral, lost her mind and had to be hospitalized in 1965; when she was declared incurable, hopeless, he divorced her

    and almost immediately married another nurse, a German immigrant woman thirty years old. She divorced him in 1972, took him for nearly everything he had while he, against advice of counsel, never lifted a finger to contest any of it. She returned to Germany and I'm trying to track her down. At present he lives alone with his bottle in a cheap, furnished apartment; to the best of anyone's knowledge, he owns not one friend and all of his acquaintances are connected with his work."
    "Hmm," Pedro gazed long and hard into the glass of pale liquor, then asked her, "It would be very interesting to discover just what the third wife held over his head to keep him from contesting that divorce, that divorce which was so very cosdy to him, so immensely rewarding to her. Who was his attorney in that action, Danna?"
    She sighed. "Bill Smith, Pedro. Another dead end street for me."
    "Maybe," mused the dark man. "Then again, maybe not; maybe, rather, a part of a deadly pattern. I knew Bill Smith, Danna, knew him rather well, really. Like all his friends, I could never conceive of him pulling a Dutch, as he was supposed to have done. Dammit, that young fellow had real promise, he was