The Djinn (16 page)

“Out?” she said
nervously.

“That’s right.
Out of the jar.
Now, how are you going to do that?”

Miss Johnson
was twitchy, but she wasn’t daunted. I have to give her that. The more she
talked about her sacred and historic mission, the more I began to believe in
it, even though I wasn’t over-enthusiastic about women cradling their vengeance
to their bosom for thousands of years.

In my opinion,
women inflict just as much shame and humiliation on men, and I don’t see men
bearing ill-will for centuries. Maybe Miss Johnson was a little unfriendly
toward men, because she’d never had one.

Miss Johnson
said quietly, “I’ll break the seals on the door,
then
I’ll open the jar with the appropriate words.”

“And what if
the
djinn gets
you before you get him? Or it?”

“I know what
I’m doing,” said Miss Johnson solemnly.

Professor Qualt
looked equally solemn when he answered. “I’m quite sure you know what you’re
doing, Miss Johnson, but that doesn’t answer my question. If you release the
djinn, and you fail to destroy it, then God knows what kind of evil tornado
you’ll have let loose. And it will surely kill you, in a way that you won’t
particularly enjoy. I don’t think there’s much amusement in being the first
modern lady to suffer one of the forty variations of ancient death.”

“I can handle
him,” insisted Miss Johnson. “I know very well I can handle him.”

“What about the
night-clock?” Anna asked.

Miss Johnson
didn’t answer.

“Do you know
about it?” Anna persisted. “You know what it is, don’t you, and what it’s used
for?”

Miss Johnson
nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I know what the
night-dock’s
for, I’ve been working it.”

Professor Qualt
shot an anxious glance across at me, and I shot a questioning look back.

“Working it?”
said Qualt, his voice husky. “Why?”

“I have needed
help and guidance,” said Miss Johnson. “I used the night-clock to bring
me-assistance.”

“What kind of
assistance?” I asked.
“Men in hoods?”

Miss Johnson
frowned. “What do you mean?” she asked, a little too frantically for comfort.

“Come on, Miss
Johnson. I saw the guy myself.

The first time when you and Marjorie went out for a walk on the day
of the funeral.
The second time he was standing in the doorway behind
you.”

“I don’t know,”
said Miss Johnson. “I don’t know what you mean. There has never been anyone
else here, apart from Mrs. Greaves and myself.”

“I saw him,
too,” said Anna.
“Quite tall, in a long robe, like a
djellaba, with a hood.”

Miss Johnson
shook her head. “You must have imagined it. Perhaps it was just a shadow. I had
my bathrobe in my arms when I was standing by the door. Perhaps you saw my
bathrobe and imagined-”

“Miss Johnson,”
I said gently, “I don’t really think that we were mistaken. If there is someone
else here, you’d better tell us.”

There was a
long silence. Then Miss Johnson said, “There’s no one.”

Professor Qualt
was lighting up his pipe. Between puffs, he said in that deep, rich voice of
his,

“Do you know
what was wrong with Mrs. Greaves?”

Miss Johnson
shook her head again. “I wasn’t aware that anything was,”

“But you said
yourself that you weren’t surprised she was dead. You said she meddled with
things that she didn’t understand, and that was why she was dead.”

It was plain
that Miss Johnson was growing distrustful of all of us, and that she was
anxious to bring this interrogation to a close. But on our part, we were just
as anxious to get to the truth. I may be imaginative enough to accept the
existence of evil spirits in old jars and sundials that work in the dark, but
my imagination has definite limits. One of the limits is that I believe what I
see with my own eyes, and I believe what I hear with my own ears.

Miss Johnson
sat up straight. “I think that the djinn may have contributed to Mrs. Greaves’s
death,” she said flatly. “Its presence has made life in this house
very-uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable?”
I said. “If you ask me, it’s made life goddamned hazardous!”

“Mrs. Greaves
was under a terrible strain-particularly when Mr. Greaves committed suicide.
She was extremely worried about the jar, because her late husband had always
warned her not to go near it, and that was why she wanted to burn this whole
place down.”

“And you didn’t
agree with that?” asked Qualt. “I didn’t think there was any need to,” insisted
Miss Johnson. “If you let me go up there-as I was going to do anyway-then I
will open the jar and get rid of the djinn forever.”

“You were going
to do it tonight?” inquired Anna.

“Yes,” said Miss
Johnson. “In fact, it has to be tonight.”

“Why?” said
Qualt

Miss Johnson
stood up and brushed her rust-colored gown. Despite her spectacles, she had an
air about her which reminded me of a ritual priestess, or a nun in some ancient
order.

“It has to be tonight
because the influences o£ the stars are at their strongest tonight. I am using
the night-clock to bring me strength, and tonight it will give me enormous
power. Tonight I shall revenge a hundred generations of wronged women.”

In the
distance, we heard that plangent music again, stealing through the old
corridors of Winter Sails with its endless, persistent, hair-raising
modulations.

“It’s tonight,”
said Miss Johnson, “You must not stop me.”

While Miss
Johnson went into the kitchen to make us all some hot coffee, Professor Qualt
and Anna and I had a hurried and muttered conference. Professor Qualt was
generally in favor of letting Miss Johnson tackle the djinn on her own. He felt
she was aware of the risks and knew enough about charms and spiritual protections
to keep her from danger. Anna, on the other hand, was stubbornly convinced that
we ought to open the jar ourselves.

“Apart from
anything else,” she said, her dark eyes glittering in the lamplight, “the jar
is absolutely priceless, and it belongs to the Iranians. Miss Johnson has only
to drop the lid and break it, and it’s ruined.”

Professor Qualt
said, “Anna, I’m just as concerned about the jar itself as you are. But don’t
you think we ought to get our priorities straight? If there was a ticking bomb
inside a glass-fronted Louis XVI cabinet, you wouldn’t hesitate to break the
glass to get it out, would you?”

“I don’t trust
her,” Anna said.

I stubbed out
my cigarette. “That,” I said, “is nearer to the truth.”

“Well,” Anna
said hotly, “there’s all the strange business about the hooded figure. She
still hasn’t answered that properly.”

“She said there
was no one else here,” said Qualt.

“Yes, but we
saw someone. I know we did. And it certainly wasn’t a walking bathrobe.”

Professor Qualt
leaned back on the battered settee. “What do you think, Harry?”

I shrugged. “I
think we ought to give her a try. After all, she seems to know what she’s
talking about. The only thing that bothers me is what happens if she fails to
destroy it. I don’t fancy one death, let alone forty.”

“There are ways
in which we can protect ourselves,” said the professor. “You’ve seen how
pentacles were used in Christianity to ward off Satan. Well, there were similar
seals and signs in ancient Middle Eastern religions. One of the most powerful
protections is the sign of the crescent moon, and we could draw one on the
floor of this room to keep ourselves safe from the worst of it.”

I looked at him
with a somewhat old-fashioned expression. “It’s not the worst of it I want to
keep away from,” I told him. “It’s all of it”

Anna
interrupted us. “I still don’t think we should let her do it,” she said
persistently. “We don’t know anything about her. We don’t even know if this
story of revenge is true. I mean, think about it. How can a story like that
really get passed on for all those thousands of years from one woman to
another? How many other stories do you know like that? There’s something about
Miss Johnson that makes me think she’s-well, I don’t know, I wouldn’t say she’s
lying, but she’s not telling the whole story.”

I toyed
absent-mindedly with a copper ashtray on the table by the settee. “What do you
think she’s leaving out?” I said, “And do you think it matters?”

Anna sighed. “I
don’t know, Harry. I simply believe that we ought to see this thing through
ourselves, without Miss Johnson. There are all kinds of things about her that
don’t ring true.

Like, why did
she let your godmother go running out of here as if all the bats in hell were
after her, and not do anything about it? And what’s she doing with that
night-clock? How does she know how to work it? Where did it come from? There
are too many loose ends for my liking.”

Professor Qualt
looked from Anna to me and back again. “Well,” he said, “I think the only way
around this one is to take a vote. AH those in favor of letting Miss Johnson do
it her way, please raise your hands.”

Professor Qualt
and I both
raised
out hands.

“All those against.”

“Oh, nuts,”
said Anna. “A democratic vote has nothing to do with it. I have a job to do,
and that’s to get that jar back to Iran-intact. I don’t mind if it’s opened,
and the djinn is let out and destroyed. But I do mind if some bungling amateur
is allowed to get her hands on it and risk smashing one of the world’s finest
examples of Iranian antique pottery. Those horses are the last remaining
representation of the horses of Nazwah the Unthinkable in the entire world. How
can we risk a ham-fisted old virgin like Miss Johnson touching a priceless relic
like that?”

At that moment,
Miss Johnson came in with a tray of steaming coffee and some assorted cookies.
She had obviously heard what Anna was saying, because her face was grim and set
as she poured the coffee.

“I’m sorry,”
said Anna. “I didn’t mean to be rude. But-when I see amateurs getting their
hands on genuine antiquities, my heart skips about two thousand beats.”

Professor Qualt
took his coffee from Miss Johnson and nodded. “I know what you mean, Anna.

But I’m sure
Miss Johnson will do everything she can to preserve the jar. Isn’t that
so.
Miss Johnson?”

Miss Johnson
looked icily at Anna. “According to Miss Modena, I have been able to preserve
my chastity, so to preserve one antique jar more or less will be child’s play.”

I stirred my
coffee studiously. The last thing I wanted right now was two women clawing at
each other’s throats, so I tried to bring the discussion to a speedy
compromise.

“Listen,” I
said. “Supposing we let Miss Johnson
tackle
the djinn
on her own, with the stipulation that we watch the proceedings, as observers,
and step in when or if we have to?”

“Miss Johnson,”
said Professor Qualt. “That sounds like a reasonable suggestion to me.”

Miss Johnson
was obviously thrown off, but there wasn’t much she could do except
agree
. I had more right to be in charge of that house than
she did, and she knew it. What’s more, it was more important to her to destroy
the djinn than it was to have arguments of protocol which might delay and
frustrate her ultimate act of vengeance. I may not be a psychiatrist, but I
know what people lust for. In Miss Johnson’s case, it was revenge and nothing
else. At least I believed it was.

“All right,”
said Miss Johnson, “on one condition.”

“No
conditions,” I ruled. “That’s the deal. If you want to stay here and have a
face-to-face with your historic enemy, then you have to do it on my terms.”

“I was going to
say, if things got out of hand-”

“What do you
mean?”

“Well,
supposing I can’t destroy the djinn?”

Professor Qualt
laughed. “If you can’t succeed in destroying the djinn, Miss Johnson, I don’t
think you’ll be in any position to impose your condition. If that happens, it’s
every man for
himself
. You can’t
legislate
survival.”

Miss Johnson
looked unhappy. “No,” she said, “I suppose not”

We sipped our
coffee in silence. I can’t remember if it was good coffee or bad. We just
needed some excuse to retreat into ourselves and think about what was going to
happen next. As I sipped, I was sure I could hear that strange monotonous music
somewhere in the room, but every time I strained my ears to hear it better, it
seemed to melt away into nothing at all. I looked at Anna, sitting tense and
beautiful on the chair opposite, neatly and provocatively dressed in a
cream-colored cotton shift; I looked at Professor Qualt, in his red-and-green
striped shirt and his scruffy khaki pants; and I looked at Miss Johnson, in her
severe rust gown and her glasses. Three strangers who had suddenly had their
fates inextricably intertwined with mine-and with the fate of the Jar of the
Djinn.

It took us five
or ten minutes to finish our coffee, but it seemed more like a half-hour.
Finally, Miss Johnson stood up and said, “It’s nearly midnight. That’s the time
when the star forces will be at their best. I must get everything ready. The
scimitar, the spells, and the magic charms.

Please wait
here for a moment. I won’t be long.”

She went out
into the hallway and closed the door behind her. I lit another cigarette and
blew smoke toward the old plaster ceiling, watching it curl and rise in the
lamplight. Anna sat rigid and wound-up, not making a move, and even Professor
Qualt’s nonchalance seemed tense and studied. There was an odd scurrying
around, like a rat running along the wall behind the
baseboard,
that
made me shudder.