Miss Clump, as it turned out, was a motherly woman whose wrinkled cheeks and plump hands suggested greater familiarity with the cook-stove than with the planets. Her office showed the most refined kind of charlatanry—everything quite solid and in good taste, with no taint of the Zodiac. At a guess, about ten thousand dollar's worth of furnishings was involved and I imagined that the annual rental might run as high as six thousand.
"Well, Mr. Tompkins," Miss Clump remarked in a pleasant, homey voice with a trace of Mid-Western flatness, "I wondered when you would be in to see me again. The stars being mean to you? Or is it another woman?"
"Let's see," I stalled, "when was the last time I consulted you?"
She cackled. "Young man, you've been comin' to see me, off and on, the last ten years. Last time was in March. That was about the red-head. Virgo in the House of Scorpio you called it."
I nodded. "That would be it, I guess. She's more scorpion than virgin."
She patted my hand comfortingly across the table. "They all are," she said, "unless they're really in love. Then even the stars can't stop 'em. What's the matter now?"
"Police," I said. "Loss of memory. Women and money are all right but I'm being followed and I've drawn sort of blank for the whole month of March. Can you take a look at my horoscope and tell me what the stars were doing to me then?"
She stared at me shrewdly. "Police," she remarked. "Land's sakes, I don't want trouble with the police. Young man, you—"
I hastened to interrupt her. "That's only a figure of speech. I'm in trouble with the government. Just tell me what I was doing in March and give me a hint of what lies ahead next month."
She examined the chart carefully and made a few pencilled notes on a scratch-pad. Then she looked up at me in bewilderment.