That fifteen minutes nagged me. It kept me from starting back to the agency and turned my steps north on Clark Street instead. I was only a couple of blocks from the haberdashery and from the tavern where I'd killed half an hour waiting for Burgoyne to come back from lunch.

  I walked the two blocks and went back into the tavern. I showed the bartender my snapshot of Uncle Am and he didn't remember ever having seen him, although he'd been working, he said, on Wednesday afternoon.

  I covered a few blocks either way on Clark Street, trying three other taverns and two restaurants. No dice. I even tried a drugstore on the chance that he might have stopped there for a coffee or a coke. And because that drugstore was the last place likely for him to have dropped into, I ordered a coke at the fountain and sat down to think things over.

  If Uncle Am hadn't dropped in anywhere to kill time waiting for the end of Burgoyne's lunch hour, then I had three quarters of an hour of his time to account for, not just fifteen minutes. And if he'd been just killing time, he'd have dropped in somewhere. He wouldn't just have walked around for forty-five minutes. Uncle Am wasn't that crazy about walking.

  There was a Chicago street map on the magazine rack. I bought it and unfolded enough of it to show the Loop and the near south side and put it down on the soda fountain. I took a pencil and traced my own route from office to the point where I was now. And Uncle Am's route must have been just about the same, up to the point where he'd talked to the wife of the traveling salesman. He must have gone back to the office from there.

  But where could he have gone during those forty-five minutes from one-thirty until two-fifteen? Had he picked up a lead that I'd missed?

  I put an X where the haberdashery was and stared at it and then around it. Crossing Clark only a few blocks away I saw Polk Street, leading to the Polk Street bridge. Who had said to me, “You go over the Polk Street bridge”?

  Mrs. Jennings, telling me about the wonderful fortuneteller, Ramah Singh. On Barr Street, just off Polk.

  It hadn't looked worth following up, the name of a fortuneteller that Reynal had been to once. I hadn't figured that Uncle Am would give it a second thought. But it was only ten minutes' walk from here. And maybe he had given it a second thought when he'd discovered at the haberdashery that he had some time to kill, and had realized that he had nothing to lose by going there.

  I put the map in my pocket and went out of the drugstore. I headed for Polk Street and across the bridge. When I reached Barr Street I started looking at mailboxes in buildings near the corner. In the third building I tried I found one with the name Ramah Singh on it, for Number six. No ad, of course, saying he was a seer or mystic, just the name Ramah Singh.

  I went up rickety stairs to the second floor and found the door of Number six. There wasn't any name on it, but a white card in one corner of the frosted-glass pane said, “Walk In,” so I walked in.

  It was the waiting room; there was another door beyond. There was a worn sofa on one side of the room and a few other pieces of furniture including a small bookcase on the other side. I walked over to the bookcase and glanced at the spines of the books; they were all on occult subjects.

  Beyond the inner door I heard faint voices and I walked nearer to it and I could hear them more loudly but couldn't make out anything that was being said, only that it was a woman's voice and a man's and the man was doing most of the talking, probably with the woman asking questions or agreeing.

  I strolled back to the bookcase and picked out a book at random. It was called The Geometry of the Soul, and I put it back where I'd found it. I looked over the other titles, wondering whether there were any books by Charles Fort, but there weren't. All the titles sounded equally screwy to me, so I picked another out at random and opened it to the flyleaf. It was inscribed Ramah Singh in heavy pencil, but another name has been erased under it. I wondered idly what Ramah Singh's real name was and picked another book to see if he'd missed. The flyleaf of that one was torn out, probably because it had been inscribed in ink that couldn't be erased. I put it back in the bookcase and didn't bother looking at any of the others. I went across the room and sat down on the sofa.

  It was only another minute before the inner door opened and a woman came through it. I didn't know her. And to this day I don't really know what she looked like, but after a quick glance at her face just to be sure she wasn't someone I knew, my eyes went to the turbaned man who stepped into the doorway as she came through.

  It was Chester Hamlin.

  He didn't seem surprised to see me. I don't know how much surprise showed in my face, but he winked at me over the woman's head, apparently a signal for me not to say anything until she was gone. So I waited until the outer door closed after her, and then Chester beat me to the punch.

  He said, “Come on in, Ed. I rather thought you might come here.”

  He stepped back into the inner room and I followed him. It was smaller than the outer room, and was dimly lighted. There was a carpet on the floor but the only furniture was a small table with a straight chair behind it and a more comfortable chair in front of it. There was a black cloth on the table and a madball— a three-inch crystal sphere—lay on a bunched piece of black velvet in the middle of the table. There were no other trappings, unless you counted Chester's turban, and aside from the turban he was neatly dressed in ordinary clothes.

  But the setup, because of its very simplicity, was more effective than most elaborate layouts would have been.

  He took the straight chair behind the table and sat down, but he looked across at me and not at the crystal ball. He said, “Sit down, Ed. I know what you want to know, and I'll tell you without you having to ask. If it had meant anything, I'd have told you sooner. I feel bad about not having told you, but it might have got me into trouble and it wouldn't have done you any good. It still won't, but”—he shrugged—“you're here now.”

  I said, “Uncle Am was here Wednesday afternoon.”

  “Yes. He came here to ask me about a Thomas Reynal who'd been here to see me—professionally. I told him what I could, but I don't think it helped him any.”

  I asked, “Did you try the crystal ball?”

  He took it seriously. “I offered to. I might have seen something in it, but he just laughed at the idea—like you did last night when I offered to use my clairvoyance to see if I could help you find your uncle. I can still try—here and now—if you can put yourself in the right frame of mind to work with me, in rapport. If you sit there looking and feeling skeptical, I won't be able to get anything.”

  He was right on one point; I didn't feel in rapport. I felt a little cold and a little suspicious. I don't know exactly what I was suspicious of, but I was trying to figure that out.

  He said, “Ed, I've been clairvoyant all my life. I'm going to level with you. I guess I haven't any choice, but to tell you the whole thing. I've been a—well, call it fortuneteller, all my life since I got out of school. Nine years, to be exact. And, God damn it, Ed, it's genuine. I am clairvoyant and I do see things in that crystal. And I've really helped plenty of people.

  “I'll admit I've faked, too. It isn't something you can turn on and off like a faucet, and plenty of times nothing comes, and I have to make up things, harmless things, because you've got to tell a mooch something. And you've got to use a name like Ramah Singh, because who'd believe anything a guy named Chester Hamlin told him?

  “I've used a dozen names, Ed, because there's one sad thing about being a clairvoyant—it's illegal, most places, to do it for money. Whether you're real or a faker, like I'll admit a lot of them are, and I am once in a while when I have to be. But I've learned one thing in nine years—and that is to keep my real identity and the identity of my current professional name separate. Any day the police can come around here and tell me to move on, and I'll have to close this place and start somewhere else under another name. But they won't know I'm Chester Hamlin, so I won't have to start all over again; I'll still have a base of operation.”

  He shrugged. “I suppose you'll tell them now. I suppose I can't blame you, Ed.”

  I said, “Let's stick to Uncle Am for a moment, Chester. What time was he here?” I knew what time Uncle Am had been here, but I wanted to see how well his story fitted.

  “It was right after I went out to eat—rather, after I came back. I generally get hungry about one o'clock. I think—let's see—Wednesday I must have got back about a quarter of two. And he was here—in the outer waiting room, I mean, sitting on the sofa. I brought him on in here to talk, and I guess we talked fifteen or twenty minutes. I told him the little that I actually knew about Thomas Reynal; I could have told him more, but he didn't want it. Things I'd seen about Reynal in the crystal, I mean. And I asked him to keep my secret over at the rooming house, and we talked about that and he said he would.”

  It fitted. The times, in particular. Ten minutes' walk from here to the haberdashery. Uncle Am would have been waiting here for him if he came back at a quarter of two, and if they'd talked about twenty minutes then he'd have got back to the haberdashery to see Burgoyne at about quarter after two. And he had.

  I said, “You should've told me.”

  “Damn it, Ed, I would have if it would have helped you. But how would it? Your uncle told me why he was looking for Reynal—the guy had skipped town with a car and the finance company had hired your agency to find him. And how could that have anything to do with whatever happened to your uncle? And I know his stopping here couldn't have had anything to do with it.”

  I dug deeper. “How did he happen to come here?”

  “He told me, so I happen to know. Reynal's sister-in-law told him that Reynal had come here; she'd sent him. Incidentally, what he really wanted was tips on horse races.”

  “Did you give them to him?”

  “In this racket, Ed—if you've got to make a living out of it—you give a man what he asks for and wants. But—unless it's something that really comes to you and you know is true—you make it ambiguous, so he can't call you too closely on it. Frankly, I don't remember exactly what I told Reynal except that it was strictly off the cuff. I didn't like him. He impressed me as a small-time crook. Anyway, I couldn't really get anything for him, so I stalled him along. Maybe he thought what I told him the first time was pretty good because he came back for more. But not after that, so maybe he lost money on the way he interpreted the guff I gave him on his second visit.”

  “Which was when?” I asked.

  “I don't remember exactly, Ed. Maybe two months ago. I do remember that the two times he came here were only a few days apart, though. And after that, he didn't come back.”

  He started to tell me minor details of things he'd told Thomas Reynal, but I wasn't interested in them. I'd found Reynal, and I was interested only in Uncle Am. And Uncle Am hadn't gotten any leads here, not any that he'd followed down, anyway. I had his whole day accounted for now, up to the time he got back to the office.

  So I said, “Shut up, Chester. Let me think.”

  I thought, but I didn't get anywhere. It didn't add up to anything more than a coincidence. A coincidence that Chester Hamlin should be a fortuneteller and that, in the course of hunting a car skip, Uncle Am should have talked to Chester because Chester had looked into the crystal for horse-race tips for the guy Uncle Am was looking for—and hadn't found.

  I couldn't make anything more out of it. Uncle Am had said he wouldn't give Chester away—or at least Chester said that Uncle Am had said that, and I saw no reason to disbelieve him. It's what Uncle Am would have said, and meant. Uncle Am had done fortunetelling himself once, way back when, with the carnival.

  But I'd think some more about it, when I was alone again, and maybe I'd see something I'd missed.

  I stood up and said, “Okay Chester.”

  “You won't give me away on this, will you?”

  I said, 'Yes and no. I'll tell Starlock, naturally. And I'll tell Bassett—he's the man from Homicide who's in charge of this. But he's interested only in murder, not in heckling fortunetellers. I'll ask him not to pass the word down the line to whatever department would heckle you. He's a good guy, so you don't need to worry about that. I won't tell Mrs. Brady or anyone else around the rooming house.”

  “Thanks, Ed. Thanks a lot.”

  I walked back to Clark Street slowly, thinking. I had covered Uncle Am's day perfectly. None of it seemed to mean anything, not even finding that he'd seen Chester Hamlin, alias Ramah Singh. I couldn't see any motive in that.

  But just the same, I decided, I was going to look for one. And while the looking was good, before Chester got home.

  I caught a cab on Clark Street and took it home to the rooming house. I decided to try my own key on Chester's door before I asked Mrs. Brady for a pass key. I remembered that all the keys were pretty much alike in that Estelle's had opened Karl Dell's door without any difficulty.

  Mine opened Chester's door almost as easily.

  I closed the door behind me and looked around, wondering what I was looking for and where to start. The closet he'd padlocked on account of the darkroom chemicals was probably the best bet, but I'd have to take off the hinges of the door to get into it, or pull off the padlock, hasp and all, with a crow bar.

  I'd take the easier things first. My eyes lighted on the bookcase and I remembered the one at Ramah Singh's waiting room and walked over to glance at the titles. There weren't any books on the occult in this one, just the ordinary assortment of books you'd expect a man of moderate intelligence to collect; historical novels, plays, a few mysteries, a smattering of nonfiction books on a variety of subjects.

  I pulled one of them out and opened it to the flyleaf, as I'd done with two or three of the books in the waiting room. It read Chester Hamlin all right but— like the books in the waiting room—there was an erasure under the name.

  What other name had he used? I was curious. He wouldn't have erased a professional name like Ramah Singh to put his own name instead, because he wouldn't, in all probability, ever have kept his books on other than the occult subjects in any office he had. He said he'd always kept his professional and personal identities apart.

  I held the book up to the light to see if I could read what the erased name had been, but couldn't.

  I put that book back and started systematically at the left side of the top row to see if the name had been changed in all of the books. After I'd tried a few and found that it had, I held each books upside down and shook it before I put it back. Often people leave things in books and forget them.

  Chester had.

  In about the eighth book I tried, an old envelope had been left as a bookmark; it had slid down out of sight so it didn't show when the book was closed. But it fell to the floor when I shook the book upside down.

  I picked up the envelope. I never got around to noticing the return address or postmark, or even the address at which Chester had received it. All I saw was the name of the addressee:

  Chester Dagon.

  It took me all of a second to drop the book and the envelope and to get to the closet door, ready to try to break it down with my bare hands, but a lot of things went through my mind in that second. Toby Dagon, killer. Chester's starting to say something, in his cups, about having a brother who—

  I forced myself to stand and think calmly for another second, and I remembered watching Chester put the screwdriver and hammer away after putting the padlock hasp on the door. The screws had been short ones; I was sure with a screwdriver and hammer I could pry the hasp off by pulling the screws right out of their moorings.

  I got the screwdriver and hammer from the bottom dresser drawer. I put the screwdriver against the top edge of the hasp and began driving it down with the hammer, between the hasp and the wood.

  It was because of the noise I was making that I didn't hear the door to the hallway open and close. The first I knew that I wasn't alone in the room was a voice behind me.

  “Go right ahead,” it said.

  I swung around. Toby Dagon, Augie Crane's righthand man, was standing only a few feet away with a gun in his hand. A forty-five automatic that looked as big as a cannon and was aimed right at my solar plexus.

  I had the hammer in my hand; I could have swung it or thrown it, but he could have pulled that trigger in a hell of a lot less time, and he couldn't have missed me at four feet.

  He said, “Go right ahead and open it. Save me the trouble.”

  Chapter 17

  I KEPT MY HANDS CAREFULLY at my sides. I said, “The key would be easier, wouldn't it?”

  Toby Dagon said, “I haven't got the key. Go ahead. You were doing fine.” There was amusement in his voice, but not in his face. Especially not in his eves. You can see eyes like them in any fish market, or maybe I'm being unfair to dead fish. Well, I wanted in that closet worse than he did. I'd been fairly sure before; I knew now.

  I turned back and started work with the screwdriver and hammer again. I didn't try to be quiet about it; in fact, I made as much noises as I could, hoping to attract attention. But it wasn't going to. When you drive a nail into a wall to hang a picture on, nobody calls the police, I wasn't succeeding in making any more noise than that.

  I got the blade of the screwdriver driven down behind the hasp and tried to pull it. I couldn't, so I wedged the nail-pulling side of the hammer head back of the screwdriver handle and used the leverage of the hammer handle, and the screws started to pull out. I dropped the hammer, hoping it would make a louder noise than it did, and pulled the hasp the rest of the way out with the screwdriver. I dropped the screwdriver, too, and jerked the door open. Uncle Am was there all right; and he was alive. That was the first thing I made sure of. His chest moved as he breathed.

  He was tied up and gagged, but that was an extra precaution because he was drugged, too. But he was alive.

  It took knowing that to make me remember the spot he and I were in right now, with Toby Dagon and a forty-five automatic right behind me.