"Next thing I know, you'll be punching a timeclock. You know where to find me, should you have further need of my expertise."

"Thanks, Kenny." I pulled on my overcoat. "Does the name Edward Kelley mean anything to you?"

Kenny corrugated his Vista-Dome forehead in concentration. "There was a Horace Kelly back in K.C.," he said. "About the time Pretty Boy Floyd bumped off those G-men at Union Station. Horace played piano at the Reno Club on 12th and Cherry. Made a little book on the side. This any relation of his?"

"I hope not," I said. "See you around."

"Make that a promise and I'll frame it."

TEN.

I rode the Seventh Avenue IRT one stop to Times Square to save shoe leather and let myself into the office as the phone was ringing. I grabbed it mid-ring. It was Vernon Hyde, Spider Simpson's sax player.

"Very good of you to call," I said, unreeling the Look assignment line. He swallowed it all, and I suggested we get together for a drink at his convenience.

"I'm at the studio now," he said. "We start rehearsal in twenty minutes. I won't be free until four-thirty."

"That would be fine with me. If you can spare a half-hour, why don't we get together then. What street is your studio on?"

"On 45th Street. The Hudson Theater."

"Okay. The Hickory House is only a couple blocks away. How about meeting me at quarter to five?"

"Sounds boss. I'll have my axe along so you won't have any trouble spotting me."

"A man with an axe stands out in a crowd," I said.

"No, man, no, you don't get it. An axe is like an instrument, you dig?"

I dug and said so, and we both hung up. After struggling out of my overcoat, I sat down behind the desk and took a look at the photos and clippings I'd been lugging around. I arranged them on the blotter like a museum exhibit and stared at Johnny Favorite's smarmy smile until I could no longer stomach it. Where do you search for a guy who was never there to begin with?

The Winchell column was as brittle with age as the Dead Sea Scrolls. I reread the item about the end of Favorite's engagement and dialed Walt Rigler's number over at the Times.

" 'lo, Walt," I said, "it's me again. I need to know some stuff about Ethan Krusemark."

"The big-shot shipowner?"

"The very same. I'd like whatever you've got on him plus his address. I'm especially interested in his daughter's broken engagement to Johnny Favorite back in the early forties."

"Johnny Favorite again. He seems to be the man of the hour."

"He's the star of the show. Can you help me out?"

"I'll check with the Woman's Department," he said. "They cover society and all its dirty doings. Call you back in a couple minutes."

"My blessings be upon you." I dropped the receiver back in the cradle. It was ten minutes shy of two o'clock. I got out my notebook and placed a couple long-distance calls to L.A. There was no answer at Diffendorf's number in Hollywood, but when I tried Spider Simpson I connected with the maid. She was Mexican, and although my Spanish was no better than her English, I managed to leave my name and office number along with the general impression that it was a matter of importance.

I hung up and the phone rang again before I lifted my hand. It was Walt Rigler. "Here's the poop," he said. "Krusemark's very top-drawer now; charity balls, Social Register, all that sort of thing. Has an office in the Chrysler Building. His residence is Number Two, Sutton Place; phone number's in the book. You got that?"

I said it was all down in black and white, and he went on. "Okay. Krusemark wasn't always so upper-crust. He worked as a merchant seaman in the early twenties, and it's rumored he made his first money smuggling bootleg hootch. He was never convicted of anything, so his record's clean even if his nose isn't. He started putting his own fleet together during the Depression, all Panama registry, of course.

"He first made it big building concrete hulls for the war effort. There were accusations that his firm used inferior construction material, and many of his Liberty Ships broke apart when the weather got rough, but he was cleared by a congressional investigation and nothing more was said about it."

"What about his daughter?" I asked.

"Margaret Krusemark; born 1922; father and mother divorced in 1926. The mother committed suicide later that same year. She met Favorite at a college prom. He was singing with the band. Their engagement was the society scandal of 1941. Seems that he was the one who broke things off, though no one knows why any more. The girl was generally regarded as something of a crackpot, so maybe that was the reason."

"What sort of crackpot?"

"The kind with visions. She used to tell fortunes at parties. Went every place with a pack of tarot cards in her purse. People drought it was cute for a while, but it got too rich for their blue blood when she started casting spells in public."

"Is this on the level?"

"Absolutely. She was known as the 'Witch of Wellesley.' It was quite the gag among young Ivy League nabobs."

"Where is she now?"

"No one I talked to seemed to know. Society editor says she doesn't live with her father, and she's not the type who gets invited to the Peacock Ball at the Waldorf, so we haven't got anything on her over here. The last mention she got in the Times was on her departure for Europe ten years ago. She may still be there."

"Walt, you've been a big help. I'd start reading the Times if they ran comic strips."

"What's all this about Johnny Favorite? Anything in it for me?"

"I can't open yet, buddy, but when the time comes, you'll get it all first."

"Much obliged."

"Me, too. See you around, Walt."

I got the phone book out of the desk and ran my finger down a page in the K section. There was a listing for a Krusemark, Ethan and a Krusemark Maritime, Inc., as well as a Krusemark, M., Astrological Consultations. This one seemed worth a try. The address was 881 Seventh Avenue. I dialed the number and let it ring. A woman answered.

"I got your name through a friend," I said. "Personally, I don't put much stock in the stars, but my fiancee is a true believer. I thought I'd surprise her and have both our horoscopes done."

"I charge fifteen dollars per chart," the woman said.

"Fine by me."

"And I don't do any consulting over the phone. You'll have to make an appointment."

I said that was also fine and asked if she had an opening today.

"My desk calendar is completely clean for the afternoon," she said, "so whatever is convenient for you."

"How about right away? Say in half an hour?"

"That would be wonderful."

I gave her my name. She thought my name was wonderful, too, and told me her apartment was in Carnegie Hall. I said I knew where to find it and hung up.

ELEVEN.

I took the uptown BMT to 57th Street and climbed the exit stairs that let me out on the corner by the Nedick's in Carnegie Hall. A bum shuffled up and tapped me for a dime as I headed for the Studio entrance. Across Seventh Avenue one block down, a picket line paraded in front of the Park Sheraton.

The lobby of the Carnegie Hall Studios was small and barren of decoration. Two elevator doors stood on the right, flanking a mailbox fed by a glass chute. There was a back entrance to the Carnegie Tavern around the corner on 56th and a wall directory. I looked for Krusemark, M., Astrological Consultations, and found her listed on the eleventh floor.

The brass indicator over the left-hand elevator described a descending arc through a semicircle of floor numbers like a clock running backward. The arrow paused at 7 and again at 3 before coming to rest horizontally. A large Great Dane was first off, rugging a stout woman in a fur coat. They were followed by a bearded man carrying a cello case. I got in and gave the floor number to an ancient operator who resembled a Balkan army pensioner in his ill-fitting uniform. He looked at my shoes and said nothing. After a moment, he shoved the metal gate closed and we started up.

There were no stops until I got off at eleven. The hallway was long and wide and as drab as the lobby downstairs. Folded canvas firehoses hung at intervals along the walls. Several pianos debated dissonantly behind closed doors. In the distance, I heard a soprano warming up, trilling through the scales.

I found M. Krusemark's apartment. Her name was painted on the door in gold letters, and beneath it an odd symbol which looked like the letter M with an upturned arrow as a tail. I rang the bell and waited. High-heeled footsteps tapped on the floor inside, a lock was turned, and the door opened to the limit of the police chain securing it.

An eye regarded me out of the shadows. The voice that went with it asked, "Yes?"

"I'm Harry Angel," I said. "I called earlier about an appointment."

"Why, of course. Just a minute, please." The door closed, and I heard the chain sliding free. When the door reopened, the eye was one of a cat-green pair set in a pale, angular face. They burned within discolored hollows beneath dark, heavy brows. "Do come in," she said, standing aside for me to enter.

She was dressed all in black, like a weekend bohemian in a Village coffeehouse; black wool skirt and sweater, black stockings, even her thick, black hair was held in a bun with what looked to be a pair of ebony chopsticks. Walt Rigler indicated she was about thirty-six or thirty-seven years old, but without any makeup she looked much older. She was very thin, almost gaunt, her meager breasts barely discernible beneath the heavy folds of her sweater. Her only ornament was a gold medallion hanging around her neck on a simple chain. It was an upside-down five-pointed star.

Neither of us said a word, and I found myself staring at the dangling medallion. "Go, and catch a falling star ..." The opening line of the Donne poem echoed through my mind, accompanied by an image of Dr. Albert Fowler's hands. For an instant, I saw the golden ring on his drumming fingers. A five-pointed star was engraved on the ring that Dr. Albert Fowler was no longer wearing when I found his body locked in the upstairs bedroom. Here was tike missing piece in the puzzle.

The revelation hit me like an ice-water enema. A cold chill ascended my spine and raised the hackles along the back of my neck. What happened to the doctor's ring? It might have been in his pocket; I didn't go through his clothes; but why would he take it off before blowing his brains out? And if he didn't remove it, who did?

I felt the woman's fox-fire eyes focused on me. "You must be Miss Krusemark," I said to break the silence.

"I am," she answered without smiling.

"I saw your name on the door but didn't recognize the symbol."

"My sign," she said, closing and relocking the door. "I'm a Scorpio." She stared at me for a long moment, as if my eyes were peepholes revealing some interior scene. "And you?"

"Me?"

"What's your sign?"

"I don't really know," I said. "Astrology's not one of my strong points."

"When were you born?"

"June 2, 1920." I gave her Johnny Favorite's birth date just to try her out, and for a split second I thought I caught a faraway flicker in her intense, emotionless stare.

"Gemini," she said. "The twins. Curious, I once knew a boy born the very same day."

"Really? Who was that?"

"It doesn't matter," she said. "It was a long, long time ago. How rude of me to keep you standing here in the hall. Please come in and have a seat."

I followed her out of the murky hall into a spacious, high-ceilinged studio living room. The furniture was a nondescript collection of early Salvation Army brightened by paisley-print spreads and quantities of embroidered throw pillows. The bold geometry of several fine Turkestan rugs offset the thrift shop decor. There were ferns of all descriptions and palms towering to the ceiling. Greenery dangled from hanging planters. Miniature rain forests steamed within enclosed glass terrariums.

"Beautiful room," I said, as she took my overcoat and folded it over the back of a couch.

"Yes, it's wonderful, isn't it? I've been very happy here." She was interrupted by a sharp whistling in the distance. "Would you like some tea?" she asked. "I just put the kettle on when you arrived."

"Only if it's no trouble."

"No trouble at all. The water's already boiling. Which would you prefer, Darjeeling, jasmine or oolong?"

"You decide. I'm not a connoisseur of tea."

She gave me a wan half-smile and hurried off to deal with the insistent whistling. I took a closer look around.

Exotic knick-knacks crowded every available surface. Things like temple-flutes and prayer-wheels, Hopi fetishes and papier-mache avatars of Vishnu ascending out of the mouths of fishes and turtles. An obsidian Aztec dagger carved in the shape of a bird glittered on a bookshelf. I scanned the haphazard volumes and spotted the I Ching a copy of Oaspe, and several of the Evan-Wentz Tibetan series.

When M. Krusemark returned carrying a silver tray and tea set, I was standing by a window thinking about Dr. Fowler's missing ring. She placed the service on a low table by the couch and joined me. Across Seventh Avenue on the uptown corner of 57th Street, a Federal-style mansion with white Doric columns improbably crowned the roof of the Osborn Apartments like a hidden treasure. "Somebody buy the Jefferson place and have it moved?" I quipped.

"Earl Blackwell's. He gives wonderful parties. Fun to watch anyway."

I followed her back to the couch. "That's a familiar face." I nodded at an oil portrait of an aging pirate in a tuxedo.

"My father, Ethan Krusemark." Tea swirled into translucent china cups.

There was the hint of a roguish smile on the determined lips, a glint of ruthlessness and cunning in eyes as green as his daughter's. "He's the shipbuilder, isn't he? I've seen his picture in Forbes."

"He hated the painting. Said it was like having a mirror that got stuck. Cream or lemon?"

"I'll take it straight, thanks."

She handed me the cup. "It was done last year. I think it's a wonderful likeness."

"He's a good-looking man."

She nodded. "Would you believe he's over sixty? He always looked ten years younger than his age. His sun is in trine with Jupiter, a very favorable aspect."

I let the mumbo-jumbo pass and said that he looked like a swashbuckling captain in the pirate movies I saw as a kid.

"Very true. When I was in college all the girls in the dorm thought he was Clark Gable."