Tomorrow Wendell (White Dragon Black) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the damn toy, there appeared to be no evidence of any magical tampering at all.
    Jonathan walked back into his office, leaving the thing where it was.
    As soon as he sat down behind his desk, he took a drink to fortify his resistance and lit another smoke.
    It took a moment for Wendell to get around to noticing that Jonathan had returned.
    “All right, Wendell, this card.” Jonathan picked up the first thing that his client had given him and tapped the edge of it against his desktop. “Tell me again where you got it.”
    “It came from a machine . . . one of those fortune teller booths,” Wendell added when Jonathan drew in a deep steadying breath.
    “You mean the coin operated ‘Zoltan’ things from, like, the thirties?”
    “Yes—yes! Only this one wasn’t a ‘Zoltan.’ I don’t remember just what it was called, but it featured an old woman inside the booth, not a man. She had a scarf on her head, and a shawl, and tarot cards spread out before her.”
    “We are talking about a mannequin, or animatronics, or whatever here, right?”
    Wendell sighed his answer. “Yes.”
    Jonathan decided he’d better only ask questions when absolutely necessary. He feared Wendell still mentally teetered too close to the edge to be sidetracked or distracted. Some people just couldn’t handle their brushes with the mystical.
    “Okay, sorry. Go on.”
    “I was on my way to my dentist’s appointment. I always try to get there ten minutes early so I can relax and get myself in the right state of mind, you see. But the office had moved quite recently and, as this was my first time there, I had misgauged the time it would take to get to the new building. Consequently, I arrived twenty minutes early for my appointment, not the ten I had planned for.”
    Jonathan wondered if Wendell had a medium setting.
    First, he hadn’t told Jonathan anything. The conversation had been only slightly above the grunt and point level. Now, Mr. Courtney had given into pointless yammering that Jonathan thought unlikely to hold any significant meaning to the issue of his death threats.
    “Finding myself so early,” Wendell continued, oblivious to Jonathan’s opinion regarding his speech, “I wondered what I should do with the extra time, when I spotted the antique store two doors away.
    “Being as I like to peruse antique shops, I thought it a perfect solution, see? I even had the thought that I could make a habit out of treating myself to a trip to that store after my appointments with the dentist.
    “The owner had seemed nice enough and though the shop felt cluttered, it appeared reasonably clean. The contents of the store were the usual compilation of curios, crap, and collectables. But I was drawn to the . . .” Wendell actually gave a shudder before bringing himself to say, “. . . the fortune machine, as soon as I laid my eyes on it.
    “I had always loved them and found them fascinating, you see. I checked the asking price and though more than I could manage, it was, from my experience with such things, rather cheaply priced.”
    Jonathan lit another cigarette from the dying embers of the previous and tried to will his client to get to the salient point of his rant.
    “I asked the owner if it worked and he looked up from the counter at me with a look of puzzlement. He had been concentrating on a crossword, I believe, and it took him a moment to comprehend what I had asked.
    “But once he understood to what my question pertained, he said to me, quite affably, that it did indeed work before lowering his head and once more resuming his scribbling on the paper.
    “And so, with this reassurance, I took a coin from my pocket. It cost only a nickel, see, and I figured what the devil. Well, they do say you shouldn’t tempt fate or the devil, don’t they, Mr. Alvey?”
    “Yes. Yes, I believe people do say that.”
    “Well, once my nickel clanked into the bowels of the machine, the head of the doll began to move back and forth