The Clairvoyant Countess by Dorothy Gilman Read Free Book Online Page A

if he stays here much longer it’ll be kidnapping.”
    “Then arrest me,” she said tartly.
    “Look, all I did was ask you to examine fourteen rings—”
    “The ways of God and karma are exceeding wondrous, are they not?”
    “His parents—”
    “Hush. If you know the parents’ address you must send them a wire. Tell them he missed the train, tell them he has German measles, tell them he sprained his ankle. Tell them he will come tomorrow, or Sunday.”
    “Madame Karitska, for heaven’s sake, I’m a policeman!”
    She said stiffly, “I am a somewhat reputable person myself. Very well, give me their address and I shall send the wire myself. Gavin—?”
    Sniffing and blowing his nose, Gavin blurted out the address. “But don’t you think—oh, don’t you think I
must
go?” he cried, beginning to tremble again.
    Madame Karitska smiled tenderly at him. “We will speak of it later, Gavin. You are very tired but there is nothing you can do. It is cruel to say but true.” To Pruden she said, “I will send the wire, don’t worry. Come back this evening if you like, and see how we fare. In the meantime Gavin and I shall have some dinner, and I shall tell him stories about other peoplewith the sixth sense. He may come to feel it not a sin or a crime after all.”
    “How did you know I thought it a sin?” asked Gavin.
    “Ah—I too was once beaten for it,” she assured him cheerfully.
    By ten o’clock that evening Gavin was restless to the point of feverishness. “Oh please,” he begged Madame Karitska. “It was my father who phoned, you know. Shouldn’t I go home?
Shouldn’t
I?”
    “Perhaps you would care to talk about it now?”
    The boy shivered. “No I can’t, it’s too horrible. I can’t, and anyway it can’t be true, I don’t believe it.”
    She tucked him into bed and told him a few stories of yogis in the East. He was asleep when Pruden knocked at the door. It was late, nearly midnight.
    “You must be very quiet,” she cautioned him, letting him inside. “It’s better for him to sleep.”
    Pruden threw himself across the couch and said almost angrily, “We found every one of the stolen items in the chapel. Every one of them except the chess pieces. It took hours and I’m exhausted.”
    “The chess pieces had crosses on them, didn’t they?” asked Madame Karitska.
    “Yes, but how the devil did you know that?”
    At that moment a terrible cry came from the bedroom, the door was suddenly snatched open, almost torn from its hinges, and Gavin stood there with burning eyes. “I have to go home!” he shouted, and then he screamed, a terrible heart-rending scream, and fainted.
    As Pruden caught the boy and laid him on the couchMadame Karitska said in a quiet voice, “It is two minutes after midnight.”
    It was during his lunch hour the next day, twelve hours later, that Pruden brought her the newspaper and wearily handed it to her. “Second page, third paragraph,” he said tonelessly, and sat down rather abruptly.
    Madame Karitska read the words softly aloud. “ ‘ MODEL FATHER KILLS FAMILY AND SELF . Five Dead in Princeton.’ ”
    “Shortly after midnight,” added Pruden in a strained voice. “Gavin’s the only surviving member of the family, except nobody knew he’d survived until I told the Chief this morning that he’s safe.” He added savagely, “You knew?”
    “No,” she said calmly, “but Gavin did. It was his terror I picked up, his terror over something at his home.”
    “ ‘Model father,’ it says,” put in Pruden.
    “Yes,” said Madame Karitska sadly, “but what, after all, is a model, and who makes one? I suspect that at Christmas holidays Gavin sensed a change, a terrible change to despair. He sensed violence hanging over the house.”
    “But surely something could have been done—”
    “How? Would you have believed him if he was capable of explaining?”
    “But he wanted to go back—”
    Madame Karitska sighed. “Because he is a very