Jacqueline

continued. "He brought with him only one small suitcase, which he never even

unpacked. He ordered a bottle of Scotch sent up to his room, took a long

walk,

had dinner, returned to his room, ordered another bottle of Scotch, and that

was

the last anyone ever heard from him."

"What about—" Makepeace began, but she held up a hand to forestall him.

"Wait, there is more." She took out another cigarette, and Makepeace lit it

for

her. She grunted her thanks, apparently not noticing that Makepeace hadn't

used

a lighter or a match. He snapped his fingers, and the flame came out of his

thumb.

"The room was torn apart," Jacqueline continued, exhaling a long stream of

smoke. "Completely destroyed, as if, in the words of one of the hotel staff,

'a

hurricane had blown through it.' Overturned furniture, broken glass in all

the

windows, shattered mirrors, and so on. A room service waiter who was bringing

up

the whiskey was the first to discover it. He was reluctant to speak with me,

since the police had already questioned him, but I gave him some money and he

told me that he heard 'echoing laughter' when he came into the room. But

there

was no one there. Also, he said that for a moment he could see through the

walls, the floor, and the ceiling, as if somehow the entire room had become

transparent."

"Or as if it temporarily had become a dimensional portal to some other

place,"

said Makepeace, and she glanced at him sharply.

"He said he could look through the walls and see stars floating in space,"

she

said. "He was very frightened by it. He did not tell any of this to the

police,

and he swore he would deny everything if I told them what he said to me. He

had

no question in his mind that there was sorcery involved. Oh, and there was

one

more thing-—a discarded room service waiter's uniform was discovered lying on

the floor of the room."

"Yes, clearly a visitation of some sort," said Makepeace with a grunt. "He

was

snatched by some demon, no question about it. Certainly no ordinary man would

have been able to abduct him."

"On that I will agree," said Jacqueline emphatically. There was something in

her

tone that made Kira glance at her with interest. Jacqueline had spoken with a

sort of proud defiance, almost as if she were challenging anyone to deny that

Morpheus could not be taken so easily. She loves him, Kira thought.

The undercarriage of the car smashed briefly against the ground as the

chauffeur