Then we can talk about the chicken again."

Kellaway shook his head. "Chicken first. Then write."

"How come?"

"Listen, schlep, I don't make up these frapping spells,"

explained the annoyed Kellaway. "The ancient book of black magic I'm using on this particular problem specifiesa""

"How does an ancient book know anything about Playpen and Houseboy?"

"Actually, the original spell is for selling a five-act tragedy to the Globe Theatre in Elizabethan England, but the principle's the same," Kellaway told him. "That's the good thing about magic. Dependability."

Harmon killed the chicken.

When the first of his new Westerns came out the following spring, it was optioned by Paragon-Mecca Films immediately for fifteen thousand dollars.

"That'll be six chickens," Kellaway informed him when he announced the sale. "Tonight at midnight, also in the park."

"Can't we use a different sort of spell? With that last chicken I almost got frostbite, and I was nearly mugged, and a gay nighttime jogger tried toa""

"Six chickens. Be nice if one of *em was a red rooster."

Harmon killed the chickens.

"The Book-of-the-Month Club?" Pert clapped her pretty hands together and smiled across the white table at him.

They were dining at a French restaurant where the appe tizers commenced at $17.95.

"I don't know," said Harmon forlornly.

"But, Junior, it's basically wonderful. How many other adult Western paperbacks get picked as the Main Selection of the month?"

"I have to kill a goat," he said in a low voice.

The candlelight made her golden hair sparkle as she shook her lovely head sympathetically. "Just one?"

"One is plenty, Pert."

"In the park again, same as the chickens?"

He nodded. "By midnight tonight."

She sighed. "Do you have the goat yet?"

"Miss DeBeck's bringing it around in her van at eleven."

After a moment Pert said, "It is the Book-of-the-Month Club, Junior."

Harmon killed the goat.

A morose robin was perched on Kellaway's drab windowsill.

"Can you write a thriller in the Lobo Sardinian manner?"

Kellaway asked Harmon. "Something like The Eisenberg Runar ound or The Hickenlooper Bypa.s.s or The Hungerford Gambit?

"Sure," answered Harmon. "Soon as I finish my third Western, I'll whip up a proposal."

"Sooner."

"Well, when exactly?"

"Sardinian's hardcover publisher, Dragoman and Brothers, wants something by late fall.

"Why can't Sardinian write it?"

"He'll be dead before then." The agent tapped his ample chest. "Heart."

"That's awful. I just saw Lobo at the last Suspense Writers of America c.o.c.ktail party a few weeks ago, and he looked chipper and fit."

"Lobo doesn't know about it."

"Then how do you . . . oh."

"To guarantee a seventy-five thousand dollar advance, Junior, requires a very heavy spell and lots of ritual."

"Such as?"

"We'll need a human sacrifice."

"No!" Harmon leaped up, shaking. "No, nope, not at all."

Making a take-it-easy motion with his left hand, the agent said, "Look, schmuck, we don't need anybody special on this one. Any sort of human sacrifice will do. A Bowery b.u.m'll be fine."

"A chicken I went along with, and even a goat. But not people, Alex."

"A b.u.m, I said." said Kellaway. "They got hundreds of *em down there. You go down there tonight, pick out a likely deadbeat, and kill him. They got *em sprawled in every alley.

Use something like a carving knife and . . . zip! No problem."

"I can't do that."

"How's you wisdom tooth?"

"What the h.e.l.l does that have to do with this?"

"Had a pretty bad toothache last night didn't you? From about eleven-thirty until almost two A.M."

"I hurt it on a chunk of lobster tail at . . . wait." He put the chair between himself and his agent. "Are you hinting you caused that toothache?"

"Only schmucks hint. I did cause it, kiddo." Kellaway smiled up at him.

"Tonight it'll be a migraine."

Harmon started to walk toward the desk. "Do you have a wax figure of me?"

"I don't keep it here. None of my clients are here."

Harmon halted. "I've had migraines before."

Kellaway chuckled. "Not like this one."

"I won't do it."

He held out until nearly midnight.

Then Harmon went and killed the b.u.m.

His thriller was published in early spring and did fairly well.

The reviews were cordial if not excited. The novel didn't make it to the best-seller lists, though it made Harmon quite a bit of money.

A week later on the official publication date, he and Pert flew to the small, idyllic Caribbean island of San Norberto.

They rented a private villa on a tranquil stretch of private beach.

He was sleeping pretty well again these days. He was gaining weight and could eat three meals a day without gagging or throwing up. He hardly ever had the screaming nightmares anymore. He had never told Pert about what he'd done in the Bowery that night.

The blonde, wearing only the bottom part of a crimson bikini, was down at the edge of the incredibly blue water, and Harmon was watching her from the green-shaded terrace of the villa when the phone on the gla.s.s-topped table next to his lounging chair rang.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"How goes it, Junior? Soaking up the sun, heh?"

"I've been thinking," said his agent. "Your thriller is doing okay."

"Yes, it is."

"But I think it's time for you to go for the big one,"

said Kellaway. "What we want next is a guaranteed best seller."

LEVITATION.

by Joseph Payne Brennan.

Morgan's Wonder Carnival moved into Riverville for an overnight stand, setting up its tents in the big ball park on the edge of the village. It was a warm evening in early October and by seven o'clock a sizable crowd had made its way to the scent of a raucous amus.e.m.e.nt.

The traveling show was neither large nor particularly impressive of its type, but its appearance was eagerly welcomed in Riverville, an isolated mountain community many miles from the motion picture houses, vaudeville theaters and sports are has situated in larger towns.

The natives of Riverville did not demand sophisticated entertainment; consequently the inevitable Fat Lady, the Tat tooed Man and the Monkey Boy kept them chattering animatedly for many minutes at a time. They crammed peanuts and b.u.t.tered popcorn into their mouths, drank cup after cup of pink lemon made, and got their fingers all but stuck together trying to sc.r.a.pe the paper wrappers off colored taffy candies.

Everyone appeared to be in a relaxed and tolerant state of mind when the barker for the Hypnotist began his spiel. The barker, a short stocky man wearing a checkered suit, bellowed through an improvised megaphone, while the Hypnotist himself remained aloof at the rear of the plank platform erected in front of his tent. He appeared disinterested, scornful, and he scarcely deigned to glance at the gathering crowd.

At length, however, when some fifty souls had a.s.sembled in front of the platform, he stepped forward into the light. Amurmur went up from the crowd.

In the harsh overhead electric glare, the Hypnotist made a striking appearance. His tall figure, thin to the point of emaciation, his pale complexion, and most of all his dark, sunken eyes, enormous and brilliant, compelled immediate attention. His dress, a severe black suit and an archaic black string tie, added a final Mephistophelean touch.

He surveyed the crowd coolly, with an expression betraying resignation and a kind of quiet contempt.

His sonorous voice reached to the far edge of the throng.

"I will require one volunteer from among you," he said. "If someone will kindly step upa""

Everyone glanced around, or nudged his neighbor, but n.o.body advanced toward the platform.

The Hypnotist shrugged. "There can be no demonstration," he said in a weary voice, "unless one of you is kind enough to come up. I a.s.sure you, ladies and gentlemen, the demonstration is quite harmless, quite without danger."

He looked around expectantly and presently a young man slowly elbowed through the crowd toward the platform.

The Hypnotist helped him up the steps and seated him in a chair.

"Relax," said the Hypnotist. "Presently you will be asked, and you will do exactly what I tell you to do."

The young man squirmed on the chair, grinning selfcon sciously toward the crowd.

The Hypnotist caught his attention, fixing his enormous eyes on him, and the young man stopped squirming.

Suddenly someone in the crowd threw a large ball of colored popcorn toward the platform. The popcorn arched over the lights, landing squarely atop the head of the young man sitting in the chair.

He jerked sideways, almost falling off the chair, and the crowd, quiet a moment before, guffawed boisterously.

The Hypnotist was furious. He turned scarlet and literally shook with rage as he glared at the crowd.

"Who threw that?" he demanded in a choking voice.

The Hypnotist continued to glare at them. At length the color left his face and he stopped trembling, but his brilliant eyes remained baleful.

Finally he nodded to the young man seated on the platform, dismissing him with brief thanks, and turned again toward the crowd.

"Due to the interruption," he announced in a low voice, "it will be necessary to recommence he demonstrationa"with a new subject. Perhaps the person who threw the popcorn would care to come up?"