Quests of Simon Ark Page 19

  “She didn’t know.”

  “Of course not. Her spirit world is made up of other truths. You wasted your money asking her.”

  “But you knew, Simon?”

  “I could guess. Those pre-Columbian items are no doubt in Luiz’s display cases right now, marked with price tags like his regular stock, waiting for the right buyer from America.”

  Felix Brighter sighed. “And the police will be there first. There’s nothing more for me.”

  “It is a new year, my friend. A time for resolutions and new beginnings. Put aside your dark thoughts and walk back to the hotel with us. I believe there is just time for a farewell drink before we catch the plane back to New York.”

  THE UNICORN’S DAUGHTER

  THE MAN’S NAME WAS Harvey Cross and he sat across the desk from me much as hundreds of other authors and would-be authors had in the years I’d been a senior editor at Neptune Books. In those first minutes of our meeting he wasn’t especially different from those others. Slim and just a bit boyish, with a trace of a stutter, he clutched the thick manuscript to his chest and said, “I wanted to try Neptune with it first because you published Simon Ark’s book.”

  “That was more than ten years ago,” I reminded him. “If it’s something occult we wouldn’t really be interested at the present time.” I was beginning to regret having agreed to see him. He could just as well have left his manuscript with my secretary, the practice followed with most other unsolicited submissions. But there’d been something in his voice on the phone that interested me. Seeing him now, I couldn’t remember what it had been.

  “Oh, it’s not an occult book. Not in the true sense of the word. It’s—I suppose you’d call it an adult fairy tale, about a strange place in the forest and a strange girl who lives there.”

  “I don’t really think—”

  “At least give it a reading!”

  “All right, Mr. Cross. Why don’t you leave it with my secretary? She’ll—”

  I was interrupted by the flashing of the intercom. I flipped a switch and heard Martha Scane, our publicity director, say, “This is Martha. Could I see you for a few moments when you’re free?”

  Harvey Cross had gotten out of his chair and was walking to the window. “Right, Martha,” I acknowledged and flipped the switch.

  I started to turn toward my visitor when I heard the shattering of glass and saw him going through the window. “Cross!” I shouted, but it was too late.

  I sat stunned for a second, then ran to the big broken window and peered out at the street twenty-eight stories below. I could see cars stopping and people gathering.

  My secretary ran in. “What was that crash?”

  “Put me through to the police, Irene! A man just jumped through the window!”

  “Was it that Cross fellow?”

  “I’m afraid so.” I saw his manuscript in a corner of my desk and I glanced at the title page. The Unicorn’s Daughter by Harvey Cross. It was all that was left of him now. I noticed the return address in the upper left-hand corner. It was a box number in Catskill, New York.

  Others crowded into my office as word of the tragedy spread. “Terrible,” Ash Gregory from the Art Department said, patting my shoulder. “Who was he, some nut?”

  “I don’t really know,” I admitted. “Just an author trying to sell his book.”

  Martha Scane came in, her blonde hair flying. “My God! Did he jump while I was talking to you?”

  “Just about. I didn’t really see it happen. He walked over to the window and when I looked around he was going through the glass.”

  I told the police the same thing. They shook their heads and I got the impression they thought Harvey Cross had been less than rational. By the time they left and everyone else cleared out of my office I was still a bit unnerved. The building’s maintenance people placed a sheet of plywood over the window until it could be replaced in the morning and the lack of a familiar angle of illumination further depressed me. I told Irene I’d work the rest of the day at home.

  I was halfway out the door when I remembered the dead man’s manuscript. I went back to my office for it but it wasn’t on the desk. I wondered if the police had taken it without telling me, or if someone else had picked it up while my office was crowded.

  On the way out I stopped at my secretary’s desk. “Irene, send a memo around—ask if anyone inadvertently took a manuscript from my office today. The title is The Unicorn’s Daughter and the author is Harvey Cross.”

  “The man who jumped?”

  “That’s right. The man who jumped.”

  When the manuscript didn’t reappear by Friday afternoon my curiosity got the better of me. The newspaper accounts of Cross’s spectacular leap from my office window had given his address as a furnished apartment in Brooklyn, and had listed no family. But he’d given me that box number in Catskill. Suddenly I was curious enough to pursue it.

  That afternoon I phoned Simon Ark at the Institute for Medieval Studies where he’d been pursuing some esoteric research project for several months. He seemed pleased to hear from me. “Ah, my friend, I read about the bizarre event at your office.”

  “Bizarre is right. That’s not the half of it, Simon.” I told him about the vanished manuscript.

  “Could one of your employees plan to sell it to another publisher, perhaps as his own?”

  “That would presuppose it had some value. As near as I can tell, Harvey Cross never published a thing. I can’t believe the manuscript has any value at all, except perhaps as the final ravings of a troubled mind.”

  “But you didn’t read it.”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “What do you plan to do about it?”

  “He mentioned you, Simon. Before he jumped he said he came to Neptune Books because we’d published Simon Ark.”

  “Hardly a recommendation, my friend. The book wasn’t one of your better sellers.”

  “He implied his book might have the same mystic quality that led us to publish it—though he denied it was an occult book.”

  “I repeat my question. What do you plan to do about it?”

  “Well, the address on the manuscript was a box number in Catskill. That’s a two-hour drive up the Hudson. I thought I might go up there tomorrow morning, arriving before the post office closes at noon. Do you want to come along?”

  “A drive in the country is tempting,” he admitted. “The dust of old books is thick in my throat these days.”

  At home that night I invited my wife Shelly to join us. But with the passing years she’s taken an increasing dislike to Simon and, as I expected, she refused. “One of these days he’s going to get you killed on one of these foolish expeditions,” she predicted.

  “This one was my idea,” I pointed out.

  “It’s about that man who jumped from your window, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “I can’t just let it rest, Shelly.”

  She sighed and said simply, “Try to be careful.” After living with me for twenty-six years she knew there was nothing more she could say.

  It was a fine warm Saturday in early June, a perfect day for our journey up the Hudson. Simon had shed his traditional black garb for grey slacks and a dark-blue jacket. It wasn’t much of an improvement but it helped. Though he often claimed to be two thousand years old, on that day he would have passed for a reasonably vigorous seventy-five.

  “What do you expect to find here?” he asked as we pulled up in front of the post office.

  “Cross didn’t drive all this way to pick up his mail. If he had a box here it means he lived near here at least part of the time. The police might be willing to dismiss this whole business, but I’m not. After all, he jumped out of my window.”

  Luckily I’d remembered the box number correctly. The postal clerk checked his records and informed me, “We have notice that Harvey Cross is recently deceased.”

  “That’s correct. What’s being done with his mail?”

  “His si
ster discontinued the box and instructed us to forward the mail directly to her. I guess he used to live with her.”

  “Here in Catskill?” The newspaper had mentioned no sister, anywhere.

  “Not far from here. A town called Olympus. It’s over toward the mountains about fifteen miles. I suppose that’s how it got its name, though there’s no Mount Olympus there.”

  I showed him my business card. “Look, it’s important I contact Cross’s sister about a manuscript he submitted to us. I need her address.”

  He thought it over and replied, “I suppose I could give you that. It’s Hazel Phoenix, Hillside Road, Olympus.”

  I wrote it down and thanked him. Back in the car I told Simon what I’d learned. “It’s not far. Let’s drive over and see the sister. Maybe she can tell us something about the dead man.”

  “By all means,” he agreed, and for the first time I detected a glimmer of interest in his eyes.

  “I’m afraid there won’t be any devils for you to chase,” I said.

  “Don’t be too sure, my friend. At Olympus we may find gods, and where there are gods there could be devils as well.”

  It took us some time to find the home of Hazel Phoenix. As its name implied, Hillside Road ran along the side of a hill. The area was on the northeastern rim of the Catskills, and although the hills weren’t as steep as those we could see in the distance they were still formidable.

  The house sat back some distance from the road, almost hidden among the trees. It might have been the forest Harvey Cross said he’d written about. I wondered if he’d written the book while living in this house.

  We parked at the end of the long driveway and had a closer look at the place. It was a small house that had been added onto in a seemingly haphazard manner. The overall impression was as if the original structure had sprouted wings—or tentacles—to spread itself over the surrounding landscape. “The gingerbread house gone wild,” Simon commented.

  At first no one answered the big brass knocker, but as we were about to turn away we heard the sound of a power saw from somewhere behind the house. We walked around back, past a cinder-block garage, and found a slim young woman cutting through some small logs.

  “That’s hard work for a woman,” I said, regretting the chauvinistic greeting almost at once.

  She turned off the saw and eyed us uncertainly. “What can I do for you?”

  “We’re looking for Hazel Phoenix.”

  “You’ve found her.” She set down the saw and wiped her hands on the legs of her jeans. I introduced Simon and myself and she shook hands, though I thought her eyes hardened at the mention of my name.

  “Mrs. Phoenix, we came about your brother, Harvey Cross.”

  “Yes?”

  “You may have recognized my name. It was my office he jumped from.”

  “Yes, I know.” Her expression didn’t change. She was a fairly attractive woman, around thirty, with the sort of face I wanted to see break out in a smile. But I wasn’t giving her anything to smile about.

  “Before he died, Harvey brought me the manuscript of a novel he’d written. It was called The Unicorn’s Daughter. Unfortunately, the manuscript was mislaid during the confusion following his death. I’m sure it’ll turn up, but in the meantime I wonder if you might have a carbon copy of it I could read. I feel I owe it to your brother.”

  She rolled the sleeves of her shirt higher on her slim arms and squinted at me in the sunlight. “It seems to me you own him a lot more than that, mister. It seems to me you’re responsible for his suicide.”

  “No, I assure you I’m not. We’d only just begun to talk. Nothing much had been said, and certainly nothing to cause his sudden decision to jump out the window.”

  “Well, I know nothing about his manuscript.”

  “Did he work on it while he was living here?”

  “Who told you he lived here?” she asked sharply.

  “The man at the post office mentioned it. He gave me your address.”

  “Well, he misunderstood. My brother lived in New York. He came here only occasionally for a visit.”

  “I see. Do you live here with your husband?”

  “I’m not married.”

  “Oh. I thought, since your name was different from your brother’s—”

  “I’m not married,” she repeated, offering no further explanation, and bent to pick up the power saw.

  “Thank you for your help, Miss Phoenix,” I muttered, and we turned away.

  “Odd sort,” Simon commented as we walked back to the car.

  “That’s for sure.”

  “Did you notice the names on the mailbox out by the road?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Take a look.”

  I did and saw there were two names printed on a small piece of paper which had been taped to the box. A. GRIFFIN and H. PHOENIX. “So she’s living here with some guy,” I said as we got in the car.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Or some girl.”

  “Are you in a hurry to get back, my friend?”

  “Not especially.”

  “This case, if we could call it that, interests me. I’d like to drive around the neighborhood and ask a few questions.”

  “About Harvey Cross?”

  “No, about A. Griffin and Hazel Phoenix.”

  There were no close neighbors along Hillside Road, and when we finally stopped at a house nearly a mile away an elderly couple there professed to know nothing about their distant neighbors. We had better luck at a small grocery store at the next crossroads. It was called Buraq’s Country Store and the owner, Sam Buraq, a stocky man in his thirties, with a short beard, talked to us.

  “Hazel Phoenix? Sure, she shops here. Lives there alone most of the time, but this fellow Griffin comes up and spends the weekends. I guess he works in New York and doesn’t want to make that two-hour drive every night.”

  “What’s he like?” I asked.

  “About her age, I guess. Early thirties. Quiet fellow. Some sort of artist, I think.”

  “If he comes up on weekends he should be here today,” I pointed out.

  “He is. I seen him drive past not ten minutes ago. Had somebody with him in the car, but I didn’t see who it was.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “A blue Ford, the one he always drives. He was headin’ up toward the house. If you came that way you must have passed him.”

  I thanked him and we went back to my car. “What do you think, Simon? Should we try Hazel Phoenix one more time?”

  “It might prove interesting,” he agreed. “This is interesting country.”

  We were about halfway back along the road when I spotted the blue Ford parked on the shoulder. It was empty. I pulled up just ahead of it and we got out. “Where could they have gone from here?” I said. “There’s nothing but woods.”

  “Let’s take a look,” Simon suggested.

  We walked a few feet into the woods and were enveloped by twilight. It was an eerie, silent place and I wanted to turn back at once. “Maybe he’s in here with some girl,” I said.

  “Quiet,” Simon cautioned, raising his hand. “Do you hear something?”

  There was a breaking of the underbrush somewhere nearby, as if someone was running through the woods. We paused, frozen in our tracks, as the sound grew nearer. Then suddenly we saw a man crash into view ahead of us. His face and chest were covered with blood, and for an instant I didn’t recognize him, but he seemed to know me. “God, Simon!”

  “Quickly! He needs help!”

  The man had collapsed on the ground. He reached out a trembling hand and spoke my name.

  Then I saw it was Ash Gregory, the artist from my office.

  “Ash, what happened? What are you doing here?”

  He was trying to speak, but there was blood in his mouth. “Took—took manuscript from your office. Had to know—”

  “Cross’s manuscript? You took it?”

  He nodded. “They—all—wanted
it.”

  I could see now he’d been stabbed several times about the face and chest. “Who did this to you?”

  “I—she—unicorn’s daughter—help her.”

  “Why did Cross kill himself?”

  “Because she—”

  But that was all he said before he died there in the forest, a long way from Manhattan.

  Simon and I looked quickly through his car before going for the police. There was no sign of Cross’s manuscript. The killer might have taken it. But there was also a good chance it was back in New York. If so, we had to find it.

  When the police arrived we told them as little as possible. I didn’t want to be held up there all day and we didn’t know very much anyway. They seemed to attribute the killing to some hitchhiker Gregory had picked up and put out an alarm to watch for hitchhikers in the area. But one of the local police, a sheriff’s deputy named Toby Chimera, thought it an odd coincidence that I’d traveled all this distance to find the body of a man I worked with in Manhattan.

  I thought it an odd coincidence too, and I tried to explain it away with a lie. “I recognized his car,” I said. “He’d told me he sometimes drove up this way on weekends, so when I saw the car pulled off the road I thought he might be in some sort of trouble and I pulled off too.”

  “Still seems to be quite a coincidence,” Chimera said, scratching his cheek. “We’ll probably want to talk with you again. And you too, Mr. Ark.”

  “I’m available,” Simon informed him. And then he said an odd thing. “Mr. Chimera, you know this part of the state. Are there many goats in the area? And snakes?”

  “Well, sure—some of the farmers raise goats. And the Catskills are full of snakes.”

  “But no lions, I imagine.”

  The deputy’s face hardened suddenly. “No, no lions.” He left us and walked back to his car.

  “What was that all about?” I asked Simon.

  “This is a strange area. I was only trying to establish exactly how strange.”

  “Strange enough to have goats and snakes, but not lions?”

  “I’ll explain later.”