"This doesn't make much sense, Mr. Tompkins," she told me, "but here it is. So far as I can make out, in March you went on a long trip and had some kind of bad accident. There's Neptune and Saturn in conjunction under Aries and Venus in opposition. That could mean more trouble with that girl, I s'pose. Then early in April you came under a new sign—money it looks like, lots, of it, and Venus is right for you. It looks like happiness. Now for the future, there's something I don't understand. There's a sort of jumble—an accident mebbe—right ahead of you and then some kind of crisis. You're going to live quite happy with a woman for a while—and, well, that's all I can see, except—" she paused.
I raised my eyebrows. "Except what?" I asked. "I want the truth."
She lowered her head. "It might be a bad illness," she said, "but it's the combination I generally call a death—somebody else's death, that is. You aren't planning to murder anybody, are you?"
I leaned back in my chair and laughed heartily.
"Good Lord, no! Miss Clump. And even if I did I have money enough to hire somebody to do it for me—like the government. Here's a check for you," I added. "Two thousand, I think you said."
"Be careful," she told me in a low voice, almost in a whisper. "Be very, very careful. I don't like to see that combination in the stars. It might mean bad trouble."
I rejoined Harcourt in the downstairs bar of the Vanderbilt Hotel and gave him a quick account of Miss Clump's forecast.
"That looks pretty hot," he allowed, "except that it sounds like anybody. The usual line is money coming in, successful trouble, and just call again sometime. Anyhow, the Bureau doesn't handle murder and you don't look like a killer to me, even though you've got yourself back in good shape, physically, I mean."
"She sounded pretty much in earnest," I told him, "but I'm damned if I know where I'd begin if I went in for a career of killing."
"So you think she's on the level?" he asked. "It's all hooey to me."