Fortnight of Fear

by Graham Masterton

  Margot had almost finished her sfinciuni when Ray Trimmer appeared. Ray was one of the hottest copywriters at Rutter Blane Rutter, although his lack of personal organization sometimes drove Margot crazy. He slapped a huge untidy package of sandwiches on to the concrete tabletop, and sat down too close to her.

  “Mind if I join you?” he asked, opening up his sandwiches one by one to investigate their fillings. “My daughter made my lunch today. She’s eight. I told her to use her imagination.”

  Margot frowned at the sandwich on the top of the pile. “Tuna and marmalade. You can’t say that’s not imaginative.”

  Ray began to eat. “I wanted to talk to you about that Spring Flower spot. I’m working toward something less suburban, if you know what I mean. I know a bed-freshener is an entirely suburban product, but I think we have to make it look more elegant, more up-market.”

  “I liked your first idea.”

  “I don’t know. I ran it past Dale and he wasn’t too happy. The woman looks like she’s fumigating the bed to get rid of her husband’s farts.”

  “Isn’t that just what Spring Flower’s for?”

  Ray bent forward to pick up another sandwich. As he did so, Margot became conscious again that the man in the dove-gray suit was still staring at her. Blond shining hair, a face that was curiously medieval, with eyes of washed-out blue.

  “Ray, do you see that guy over there? The one sitting by the waterfall?”

  Ray looked up, his mouth full of sandwich; then turned and looked around. At that moment a crowd of Japanese tourists were shuffling across the plaza, and the man was temporarily obscured from view. When the tourists had gone, so had he; although Margot was at a loss to understand how he could have left without her seeing him go.

  “I don’t see any man,” Ray told her. He pulled a face, and opened up the sandwich he was eating. “What the hell’s this? Cheez Whiz and Cap’n Crunchberries. Jesus!”

  Margot folded her napkin, and tucked it into her Jasper Conran tote bag. “I’ll catch you later, Ray, okay?”

  “Don’t you want to see what I’ve got for dessert?”

  Quickly, Margot crossed the plaza toward the waterfall. The water slid so smoothly over the lip at the top that it didn’t appear to be moving at all; a sheet of glass. To her surprise, the man was standing a little way behind it, in a brick niche where a bronze statue of a naked woman was displayed; a naked woman with a blindfold.

  The man saw Margot coming and made no attempt to walk away. Instead he looked as if he had been expecting her.

  “Pardon me,” said Margot, as commandingly as she could, although her heart-rate was jumping around like Roger Rabbit, “do you have some kind of eye problem?”

  The man smiled. Close up, he was very tall, six foot three, and he smelled of cinnamon and musk and some very perfumed tobacco.

  “Eye problem?” he asked her, in a soft, deep voice.

  “Your eyes seem to be incapable of looking at anything except me. Do you want me to call a cop?”

  “I apologize,” the man replied, bowing his head. “It was not my intention to intimidate you.”

  “You didn’t. But there are plenty of women who might have been.”

  “Then I apologize again. My only excuse is that I was admiring you. Do you think I might give you something, a very small token of my regret?”

  Margot frowned at him in disbelief. “You don’t have to give me anything, sir. All I’m asking is that you don’t stare at women like Sammy the Psychotic.”

  He laughed, and held out his hand. In his palm was a tiny sparkling brooch; a miniscule pink-and-white flower, embedded in glass.

  Margot stared at it. “It’s beautiful. What is it?”

  “It’s a jinn-flower, from Mount Rakapushi, in the High Pamirs. It’s extinct now; so this is probably the last one there is. It was picked high up on the snow line, and taken to Hunza, where it was encased in molten glass by a method that has been completely lost.”

  Margot wasn’t at all sure that she believed any of this. It sounded like an extremely devious and complicated line; but a line all the same. She slowly shook her head. “I couldn’t possibly accept anything like that; even if I wanted to accept anything at all.”

  The man said gently, “I shall be extremely hurt if you don’t. You see, I bought it especially for you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You don’t even know me.”

  “You’re Margot Hunter. You’re an account executive for Rutter Blane Rutter. I’ve seen you many times before, Margot. I made a point of finding out.”

  “Oh, yes?” Margot snapped. “And who the hell are you?”

  “James Blascoe.”

  “Is that it? James Blascoe? And what do you do, James Blascoe? And what right do you think you have to check up on me, and then to stare at me?”

  James Blascoe raised both hands in apologetic surrender. “I don’t really do anything. Some people, like you, are the doers. Other people, like me, are the watchers. You do, I watch. That’s all, it’s as simple as that.”

  “Well, do you mind going someplace else to do your watching, Mr Blascoe?” Margot demanded. “Someplace where you won’t scare people?”

  “Your point is well taken,” James Blascoe told her, and bowed his head once again, and walked off across the plaza. Margot watched him go; both relieved and disturbed. He had been remarkably attractive, and he was obviously rich. As he reached Bowling Green on the far side of the plaza a long midnight-blue Lincoln stretch-limo appeared, and drew up to the curb. He climbed into it, and closed the door, and didn’t look back once.

  Margot returned to her office. Ray was waiting for her, with a whole sheaf of messy notes and layouts spread all over her normally-pristine desk.

  “You look like you saw a ghost,” said Ray.

  Margot gave him a quick, distracted smile. “Do I? I’m okay.”

  “You want to look at these new ideas? Kenny did the drawings. They’re not exactly right yet, but I think you’ll understand where we’re coming from.”

  “All right,” Margot nodded. She shuffled through the layouts, still thinking about James Blascoe. Other people, like me, are the watchers.

  “Neat pin,” Ray remarked, as she lifted up another layout.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your pin, your brooch, whatever it is. Where’d you get it? Bloomingdale’s?”

  Margot looked down at her fawn linen business suit, and there it was, sparkling brightly in the exact center of her lapel. The tiny jinn-flower, embedded in glass.

  “Now how the hell did he do that?” she demanded. Then, indignantly, to Ray, “This isn’t Bloomingdale’s. This is just about the rarest brooch in the whole darn universe! A real flower, handmade glass.”

  Ray took off his spectacles and peered at it more closely. “Really?” he said; and gave Margot the most peculiar look that she had ever seen.

  He was waiting for her the next morning when she arrived at the office. He was standing by the revolving doors in the bright eight o’clock sunshine; immaculately dressed, as yesterday, in gray. He stepped toward her with both hands held out, as if to say, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to impose on your life yesterday, I don’t mean to impose on your life today.

  “You’re angry with me,” he told her, before she could say anything. She had to step out of the way to avoid the hurrying crowds of office-workers.

  “I’m not angry with you,” she retorted. “It’s just that I can’t accept your gift.”

  “I don’t understand,” he replied. For the first time, in the morning light, she saw the small crescent-shaped scar on his left cheekbone.

  “It’s too much. It’s too valuable. Mr Blascoe, I don’t even know you.”

  “What difference does that make? I wanted you to have it.”

  “In return for what?”

  He shook his head as if she had amazed him. “In return for your pleasure, that’s all! Do you think I’m some kind of Romeo?”

  “But why
me? Look at all these pretty girls! Why choose me?”

  James Blascoe looked serious for a moment. “Because you are special. Because you are chosen. Because there is no other girl like you in the whole wide world.”

  “Well, I’m flattered, Mr Blascoe, but I really can’t –”

  “Keep the brooch, please. Don’t break my heart. And please … accept this, too.”

  He held out a small purse of pale blue moire silk, tied with a gold cord.

  Margot laughed in disbelief. “You can’t keep on giving me gifts like this!”

  “Please,” he begged her; and there was a look in his eyes which made it oddly difficult for her to resist him. The look in his eyes didn’t match his voice at all: it wasn’t a begging look. It was level and imperative. A look that said, you will, whether you like it or not. Before Margot had time to analyze what she was doing, and the implications of what she was doing, she had taken the silk purse, and held it up, and said, “All right, then. Thank you.”

  James Blascoe said, “It’s an ounce of perfume created by Isabey, of the Faubourg St Honoré, in Paris, in 1925. It was specially blended for the Polish baroness Krystyna Waclacz, and there is no more left, but this one bottle.”

  “Why give it to me?” Margot asked him. For some reason, she felt frightened rather than pleased.

  James Blascoe shrugged. “What will happen to it, if you don’t wear it? Wear it tonight. Wear it every night.”

  “Hi, Margot!” called her secretary, Denise, as she passed close by. “Don’t forget the Perry meeting, eight-thirty on the button!”

  Margot looked up at James Blascoe but he was standing against the sun and his face was masked in shadow. She hesitated for a moment, and then she said, “I’d better go,” and pushed her way through the revolving door, leaving James Blascoe standing outside, watching her intently, his features distorted by the curved glass.

  In the elevator, she felt as if she were being compressed. Breathless, squashed, tightly surrounded by people who were determined to press the life out of her. By the time the chime rang for the 36th floor, she was shivering, as if she had contracted the ’flu, and when she reached her office she stood with her back pressed to the door, taking deep breaths, wondering if she were terrified or aroused, or both. That night she was taken to see Les Misérables by Dominic Bross, the record producer, whom she had met while working on the Bross Records account. Dominic was 55, gray-haired, handsome, talkative, opinionated, and Margot wouldn’t have dreamed of going to bed with him in a million years. However, she always enjoyed his company, and he always behaved like a perfect gentleman.

  Halfway through the second act, Dominic leaned over to Margot and whispered, “Do you smell something?”

  Margot sniffed. All she could smell was the musky Isabey perfume which James Blascoe had given her. Once it had warmed on her skin, it had started to give off the deepest, most sensuous fragrance that she had ever experienced. Maybe it had been wrong of her to accept it, but it was something erotic and very special, something that made her head spin.

  “I don’t know,” Dominic complained. “It smells like something died.”

  James Blascoe was waiting by her apartment door when she returned from her dinner with Dominic. She was tired and quite angry. For some reason Dominic had been unusually hurried and offhand, and hadn’t even accepted her invitation to come up for coffee. Finding James Blascoe at her door didn’t make her feel very much better.

  “Well, well,” she said, taking out her key. “I’m surprised Leland let you in to the building.”

  “Oh, you know me,” James Blascoe smiled. “Bribery and corruption are second nature to me.”

  “I’m not going to invite you in,” Margot told him. “I’ve had a totally terrible evening, and all I’m going to do is take a bath and get some sleep.”

  “I’m sorry,” James Blascoe told her. “I quite understand, and I won’t intrude. But I wanted to give you this.”

  He reached into his inside pocket, and took out a long black jewelry case. Before Margot could protest, he had opened it up, and shown her what lay inside. It was a shimmering diamond necklace, so bright that it was almost magical, seven diamond festoons attached to ten diamond-encrusted bows.

  “This is absurd,” Margot protested; although it was hard for her to keep her eyes off the necklace. It was absolutely the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life.

  James Blascoe slowly smiled. It was like somebody slowly drawing a spoon through an open jar of molasses. “Traditionally, this necklace was supposed to have been part of the ransom offered by Catherine the Great to the Sultan of Turkey, to persuade him to release her husband Peter the Great after he was captured at the Battle of Rusen in 1711.”

  “Well, who does it belong to now?” asked Margot. The diamonds shone in tiny pinpricks of light across her cheeks.

  “Now,” James Blascoe said, with utter simplicity, “now, it belongs to you.”

  Margot lifted her eyes away from the necklace. “Mr Blascoe, this is ridiculous. I’m not a whore.”

  “Did I ever suggest that you were? Take it. It’s a gift. I want nothing in return.”

  “You really want nothing?” Margot challenged him.

  “Take it,” he said. “I want you to have the finest of everything. That’s all. I have no other ambition.”

  There was an unblinking look of command in his eyes. Margot knew that the jinn-flower brooch and the Isabey perfume had been one thing. But if she accepted this necklace, no matter how much James Blascoe protested that he wanted nothing at all, she would be beholden to him. It was probably worth over a hundred thousand dollars. It was certainly exquisite: the kind of jewelry which most women can never even dream of owning.

  “No,” said her mouth. What am I doing? said her mind. But her hand reached out and took it.

  Two days later, at a cocktail thrash at the Plaza Hotel for Overmeyer & Cranston, one of their biggest clients, Margot decided to take a risk and wear the necklace for the first time. She matched it with a simple electric-blue cocktail dress, and wore the simplest of diamond-stud earrings.

  The party was already noisy with laughter and conversation when Margot arrived. She smiled and waved to O & C’s president George Demaris, and then to Dick Manzi of NBC. However, she was surprised when both of them frowned at her and gave her only a half-hearted wave in return; and she was even more surprised when the cocktail waiter stared at her in what could only be described as dumbstruck astonishment.

  She took a glass of champagne, and challenged him, “Something wrong?”

  “Oh, no, no. Nothing’s wrong, ma’am.”

  A few moments later, however, Walter Rutter angled his way across the room toward her and took her arm and tugged her almost immediately to the side of the buffet table.

  “Margot? What’s with the necklace? You can’t wear something like that here!”

  “What do you mean, Walter? This necklace is worth a fortune! It was part of the ransom that Catherine the Great gave to the Sultan of Turkey!”

  Walter narrowed his crowsfooted eyes and stared at Margot for a long time. Margot defiantly stared back at him.

  “Catherine the Great gave that necklace to the Sultan of Turkey?” Walter repeated.

  Margot nodded. “A very dear friend gave it to me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Walter told her. He was obviously choosing his words carefully. “But – if it’s worth a fortune – maybe this is not quite the place to wear it. You know, for the sake of security. Maybe we should ask the management to lock it in the safe for a while.”

  Margot fingered the necklace in disappointment. “You really think so?”

  Walter laid a fatherly arm around her bare shoulders. “Yes, Margot. I really think so.” Then he sniffed, and looked around, and said, “Those fish canapes sure smell strong. I hope nobody goes down with food-poisoning.”

  The next morning, James Blascoe was waiting for Margot in the foyer of Rutter Blane Rutter, with a la
rge gift-wrapped box in his hands. Black shiny paper, a black shiny bow.

  “Mr Blascoe,” she said, emphatically, before he could open his mouth, “this really has to stop. You can’t go on giving me all of these ridiculously expensive gifts.”

  He thought for a moment, lowered his eyes. “Supposing I were to tell you that I loved you, beyond all reason?”

  “Mr Blascoe –”

  “Please, call me James. And, please, take this gift. It’s an original Fortuny evening dress, made for La Comtesse de la Ronce, one of the wealthiest women in France, in 1927. The only person in the world who could possibly wear it is you.”

  “Mr Blascoe –” she protested. But his eyes told her that she must accept the gown, no matter what.

  “James,” she whispered, and took the box.

  That evening, he was waiting outside her apartment, with a black silk shoe-bag. Inside were the softest pair of pointed suede ankle-boots, handmade by Rayne. They were meticulously hand-stitched, and dyed to the color of crushed loganberries, to match exactly the color of the Fortuny gown.

  “Take them, wear them,” he insisted. “Wear them always. Remember how much I love you.”

  She was awoken the next morning by the phone ringing. Tugging her fingers through her tangled curls, she found the receiver and picked it up.

  “Margot? Sorry to call you so early. This is Walter Rutter.”

  “Walter! Hi, good morning! What can I do for you?”

  “Margot, I wanted to catch you before you left for the office. You see, the point is I’m in some difficulty here. I have to make some savings in the agency’s overall budget, and that regrettably means shedding some staff.”

  “I see. Do you know how many?”