money in the chimney, and as I reached up, I felt not the envelope which I'd lodged there, but a single sheet of paper. I removed it, already in a fury, before I even turned on the light so that I could see the words:
You really are a silly fool to think that a man of my abilities wouldn't find your little stash. One does not have to be a vampire to detect a bit of telltale moisture on the floor and on the wall. Have a pleasant adventure. I shall see you Friday. Take care of yourself! Raglan James.
I was too angry for a moment to move. I was positively fuming. My hands were knotted into fists. You petty little miscreant! I said in this miserable, heavy, opaque, brittle voice.
I went into the bathroom. Of course the second stash of money wasn't behind the mirror. There was only another note.
What is human life without difficulty You must realize I cannot resist such little discoveries. It's like leaving bottles of wine around for an alcoholic. I shall see you Friday. Please walk carefully on the icy sidewalks. Wouldn't want you to break a leg.
Before I could stop myself I slammed my fist into the mirror! Ah, well. There was a blessing for you. Not a great gaping hole in the wall, as it would have been if Lestat le Vampire had done it; just a lot of broken glass. And bad luck, bad luck for seven years!
I turned around, went downstairs, and back into the kitchen, bolting the door behind me this tune, and opened the refrigerator. Nothing inside! Nothing!
Ah, this little devil, what I was going to do to him! How could he think he would get away with this Did he think I was incapable of giving him twenty million dollars and then wringing his neck What in the world was he thinking ...
Hmmm.
Was it as hard to figure out as all that He wasn't coming back, was he Of course he wasn't.
I went back into the dining room. There was no silver or china in the glass-doored cabinet. But certainly there had been silver and china last night. I went into the hallway. There were no paintings on the walls. I checked the living room. No Picasso, Jasper Johns, de Kooning, or Warhol. All gone. Even the photographs of the ships were gone.
The Chinese sculptures were gone. The bookshelves were half empty. And the rugs. There were precious few of them left- one in the dining room, which had almost caused me to kill myself! And one at the foot of the steps.
This house had been emptied out of all its true valuables! Why, half the furniture was missing! The little bastard wasn't going to return! It was never part of his plan.
I sat down in the armchair nearest the door. Mojo, who'd been following me faithfully, took the opportunity to stretch out at my feet. I dug my hand into his fur and tugged at it, and smoothed it, and thought what a comfort it was that the dog was there.
Of course James was a fool to pull this. Did he think I couldn't call on the others
Hmmm. Call on the others for help-what a perfectly gruesome idea. It did not take any great feat of imagination to guess what Marius would say to me if I told him what I'd done. In all probability he knew, and was smoldering with disapproval. As for the older ones, I shuddered to think on it at all. My best hope from any standpoint was that the body switch would go unnoticed. I'd realized that from the start.
The salient point here was that James didn't know how angry the others would be with me on account of this experiment. He couldn't know. And James didn't know, either, the limits of the power he now possessed.
Ah, but all this was premature. The theft of my money, the looting of the house-this was James's idea of an evil joke, no more, no less. He couldn't leave the clothes and money here for me. His thieving petty nature wouldn't allow it. He had to cheat a little, that was all. Of course he planned to come back and claim his twenty million. And he was counting on the fact that I wouldn't hurt him because I'd want to try this experiment again, because I would value him as the only being who could successfully pull it off.