of Mr. James. All the remaining assets of Mr. Gregor were now transferred to my other name—which by the way was Stanford Wilde, for all that it matters now.
All of my agents are used to such bizarre instructions—shifts of funds, collapsing of identities, and the authority to wire funds to me anywhere I might be in the world on the basis of a telephone call. But I tightened the system. I gave bizarre and difficult-to-pronounce code words. I did everything I could, in short, to improve security surrounding my identities, and to fix the terms of the transfer of the ten million as firmly as I could.
As of Wednesday noon, the money would be in a trust account at the Washington bank, from which it could only be claimed by Mr. Raglan James, and only between the hours of ten and twelve on the following Friday. Mr. James would verify his identity by physical conformity to his picture, and by fingerprint, and by signature, before the money would be placed in his account. At one minute after twelve noon, the entire transaction would be null and void, and the money would be sent back to New York. Mr. James was to be presented with all these terms on Wednesday afternoon at the very latest, and with the assurance that nothing could prevent this transfer if all the instructions were followed as laid out.
It seemed an ironclad arrangement, as far as I could figure, but then I wasn’t a thief, contrary to what Mr. James believed. And knowing that he was, I examined all aspects of the deal over and over, rather compulsively, in order to deny him the upper hand.
But why was I still deceiving myself, I wondered, that I would not go through with this experiment? For surely I intended to do exactly that.
Meantime, the phone in my apartment was ringing over and over again, as David tried desperately to reach me, and I sat there in the dark, thinking things over, and refusing to answer, vaguely annoyed by the ringing, and finally unplugging the cord.
This was despicable, what I meant to do. This varmint would use my body, no doubt, for the most sinister and cruel crimes. And I was going to allow this to happen, merely so that I could be human? How impossible to justify, in any light whatever, to anyone whom I knew.
Every time I thought of the others discovering the truth—any of them—I shuddered, and put the thought completely from my mind. Pray they were busy throughout the vast hostile world, with their own inevitable pursuits.
How much better to think about the entire proposition with pounding excitement. And Mr. James was right about the matter of money, of course. Ten million meant absolutely nothing to me. I had carried through the centuries a great fortune, increasing it by various offhand means until even I myself did not know its true size.
And much as I understood how very different the world was for a mortal being, I still could not quite comprehend why the money was so important to James. After all, we were dealing with questions of potent magic, of vast preternatural power, of potentially devastating spiritual insights, and demonic, if not heroic, deeds. But the money was clearly what the little bastard wanted. The little bastard, for all his insults, did not really see past the money. And perhaps that was just as well.
Think how very dangerous he might be had he truly grand ambitions. But he did not.
And I wanted that human body. And that was the bottom line.
The rest was rationalization at best. And as the hours passed, I did quite a bit of that.
For example, was the surrender of my powerful body really so despicable? The little creep couldn’t even use the human body he had. He’d turned into the perfect gentleman for half an hour at the café table, then blown it with his awkward graceless gestures, as soon as he’d stood up. He’d never be able to use my physical strength. He wouldn’t be able to direct my telekinetic powers either, no matter how psychic he claimed to be. He might do all right with the telepathy, but when it came to entrancing or spellbinding, I suspected he would not even begin to use those gifts. I doubted he would be able to move very fast. Indeed, he’d be clumsy and slow and ineffective. Actual flight probably wouldn’t be a possibility for him. And he might even get