I struggled for my handbag which concealed my own weapon but that was easily plucked from my hands. Before they could pin my wrists, I threw my notebook out to the gutter. It was filled with the sketches I had worked on that evening. It also contained my name and address. Quite a few in San Francisco would recognize my name. I am Lady Margaret, the Countess of Chesterleigh. The men who had dragged me through the doorway were in very great danger. I hoped I would survive until they discovered their peril.

I struggled vigorously until I saw it was pointless. Considering by my captors' heavy wheezing I judged them to be finished with the struggle as well.

"What is it that you want," I asked when I caught my breath. "Call Dr. Henry Trask. He will pay anything. His number--"

"Shut up," rasped a voice out of the dark. Something cold and small pressed hard against my neck. I fell silent and stood very still.

"The King wants to see ya," another voice growled close to my ear. He could only mean the King of Swords. Suddenly the gun barrel pressed against my neck was the least of my worries.

"Lead on," I said with as much pluck as I could muster. One of them grunted. They pulled me deeper into the darkness. With great surety and without light they led me through a narrow passage and down a steep flight of stairs. I had never met the King of Swords. Few had. Like everyone else I had read about him in the newspapers. He was famous for beheading his enemies--and he had quite a large number of enemies. I had not been aware that I was one of them.

Finally a door opened to reveal a room illuminated by mellow lamplight. Soft shadows lurked in the corners of a genteelly opulent room. A man, somewhat older than I, lay on a French fainting couch. He wore a dressing gown of deep wine silk and lay back smoking a thin black cigarette. The smoke curled lazily up to the ceiling and he studied it with a frown. The famous sword lay on a low table beside his couch.
My captors shoved me into the room. The King--I was sure it was he--turned to contemplate me without change of expression. His jet-black hair, graying at the temples, contrasted with his pale complexion.

"You know who I am, of course," I said to him without greeting.

"Yes, Countess, I know who you are." He put the black cigarette to his lips and regarded me languidly through the smoke.

"Then you know you have committed a grave mistake," I said. I was pleased that my voice did not shake. It should have.

"Perhaps. Please have a seat," he said. He gestured to a delicate Louis XIV parigine chair beside a small table decorated with a fussy vase of wildflowers.

I could now see my two captors clearly. One man was tall with deeply shadowed eyes and the other had an open Irish face that would be charming in other circumstances. Somehow I knew he possessed the raspy voice. His gun was still pointed at me. The taller man pushed me down into the chair. Then the two henchmen receded into the shadows and became as still and watchful as stalking cats.

"What could you possibly want with me?" I said.

King reached over and slowly lifted the sword from the low table. He regarded the blade with heavy-lidded eyes.

"I need a favor from you," he said quietly, almost dreamily. Clearly he meant to intimidate me. He certainly succeeded.

"Why should I do you a favor?" I asked.

"You'll do it for me," he glanced briefly my way. "Or you'll go home in a sack."

"I see," I said, crossing my legs as casually as I could manage. "What is the nature of this favor?" I asked.

King studied the sword, twisting it a little so that it glittered in the soft light.
"My son was taken last night," he said.

"By whom?" The glittering blade fascinated me as well, though perhaps for a different reason.

"The coppers. They raided the Red Toy and found him unconscious in the back. Looks like somebody drugged him and after they stuffed his pockets full of opium they dropped a nickel in the rat line."

"You believe he is innocent?" I asked.

"I do." He answered truthfully if I am any judge.

"Why would someone do that?"

"I have an enemy or two," he said. Then, to my relief, he put the sword down and lit another black cigarette from the stub of the old one. He offered a gold cigarette case to me and I declined with a shake of the head.

"Why do you think I can return your son to you?"

He knocked ash off his cigarette into a crystal ashtray. "You're tight with the laws," he said. "Especially Monahan."

Inspector Thomas Monahan was indeed a good friend of mine. We had solved many crimes together, though I'm sure he would say I merely meddled in the affairs of the police. I waited for the King to continue. He didn't look at me, but merely contemplated the smoke drifting up from his cigarette.

"So you're going to ask the good inspector to make the dope disappear and get my son released," he said.

I leaned forward. "Why do you think Mr. Monahan would do as I ask?"

The King darted a flickering glance at me. "Because he likes your beautiful head attached to your pretty neck."

I leaned back. "I see. If I refuse, you will kill me. How would you gain from that?"

He shrugged. "If you refuse, you're dead and I still send a note from you asking him to let my son go." He looked at me steadily and directly for the first time, his eyes dark pools of veiled malice. I shivered. "So how do you want to do this?" he murmured.

If I had had an hour, I feel confident I could have worked out a resolution that would have left me with my head attached and this King ruling a prison cell. However, I didn't have an hour.

"Very well. Bring me a telephone and I will talk to Mr. Monahan."

"Nothing doing." He ground out his cigarette. "Dragos, bring the Countess pen and paper." The tall man with the deeply shadowed eyes, stirred and went to a dim corner of the room. He returned with a fragile silver and ebony letter writing set. It looked as if it had never been used, though the fountain pen had been freshly filled. I wrote a brief note to the inspector making the King's request, signed it and handed it back to Mr. Dragos who had remained, hovering silently at my elbow.

Mr. Dragos took the note to the King who read it and then gave it back to his henchman with a nod. The tall man put my note in his breast pocket and left.

"Daniel, has Madame Uzana arrived upstairs?"

"Yes, sir," Daniel rasped softly.

"Send her down." The King turned back to me as Daniel disappeared through the door. "You are only going to help solve part of the problem," he said. "I need to know who and why."

"I should think why is obvious," I said.

"Perhaps, but who is paramount." His gaze flickered down to the sword.

A few moments later, Daniel reappeared with an elderly woman dressed in faded black, edged with worn lace that had once been white. She walked quite bent over supported by a low cane. Her iron gray hair was pulled back in tight bun on the nape of her neck. Daniel brought her a low chair and she sat across from the King with the table between them. She squinted at me and nodded. I murmured a polite greeting.

From deep in her bosom she pulled out a much-used deck of cards. She gave them to the King who shuffled them several times before handing them back. Madame Uzana shuffled them again in her gnarled bird-like hands and then laid them out on the table, ignoring the sword.

Tarot cards. I had not seen them in use since my Paris days nearly fifteen years ago. The old woman handled them expertly. This was a very old deck, perhaps older than the woman herself.

"What is it that you seek?" she said. She spoke in English, but with such a thick accent I did not understand her for a moment. She had addressed her question to the King.

"I want to know who framed my son," he said. He lit another black cigarette with a small gold lighter. "Where should I begin looking for the man who did this?"

The old woman nodded and studied the cards. "I see a young man who handles money," she said. She dealt another card from the deck. "No, I see three young men. One of them has a great deal of money." She dealt out two more cards. "I see rage, jealousy and hatred," she added. She went on in this manner, dealing out the cards slowly and weaving a tale of angry young men fighting over money.
When I lived in Paris in 1920, I had been temporarily separated from my darling Henry. In my desperation I often sought the services of a lovely young Romany fortuneteller, who had been displaced in the Great War. She and I became fast friends and she taught me a good bit about tarot cards and what each of the cards meant. She and I remained friends, even after dear Henry and I were reunited, and in spite of the fact that her prognostications had come true about as often as someone who was merely guessing.

In any case, I knew that the beautiful old cards laid out on the table and the tale spun by the old woman had no relationship to each other. I found this fact to be very interesting.

"Are there any women involved in this?" I asked after both the Empress and the High Priestess had joined the cards on the table.

Madame Uzana regarded me with an opaque stare. "No," she said. "These are mere . . ." She searched for the proper word.". . . archetypes." She gestured to the two female cards. "They represent gold and silver wealth."

"I see," I said. "Which card represents the three angry young men?"

The old woman studied the cards in front of her and tapped the Page of Cups, the King of Swords and the Hierophant. The Queen of Swords and Death separated the latter two from the former. The Page of Cups usually represents an artistic child, not an angry man.

"How interesting!" I exclaimed. "Have you been reading the cards a very long time?"

"Since my youth," said the old woman. Her voice was as level as her stare. She knew I wasn't fooled. I glanced up at the King who studied the cards soberly.

"Who are the young men she is speaking of? Do they sound familiar?" I asked him.

The King nodded. "My son's got two good buddies who collect the fan-tan money." A fact surely known to the old woman, I thought.

"Would they have framed your son for some reason?"

The King shrugged. "I'll check them out," he said, his voice glacier ice. "If they did, they will deeply regret it."

"Had your son harmed anyone recently? Did he quarrel with his friends?" I asked.

"Nah," said the King. "They were thick as thieves." He chuckled at his own jest. The old woman's eyes widened and she stared at him with open loathing and hatred. Then she dropped a card and quickly turned away to pick it up. When she straightened back up, her expression was veiled.

"Do you have any children, Madame?" I asked. She seemed surprised by my question and didn't answer for a moment.

"My son is a doctor back in my homeland, Doamna," she said. Her mode of address told me her homeland was Romania. I had already guessed her origin as somewhere in eastern Europe.

"Her grandson died recently," said the King. I happened to be studying the old woman's face when he spoke. The poisonous hatred flared again and then quickly vanished.

"I am sorry for your loss, Madame," I said. "Had he been ill?"
"He was beaten to death and left in an alley like garbage," she said slowly, carefully. I confess even her careful statement gave me gooseflesh. I chose my next question with great care.
"How, very terrible," I said. "Have the police captured the killer?"

The old woman looked down in silence. I believed I knew the answer. I had begun to believe the police had found her grandson's killer with opium stuffed into his pockets.

"Answer the question, Madame Uzana," said the King flatly. I could see that understanding might be dawning in his eyes as well.

"Yes," she spat the word. "One of my grandson's murderers is in prison." Vile bitterness spilled out of her with every word. "He and his friends will be dead soon."

"What are you saying?" said the King. Danger thickened the air. I was seized with an urge to bolt out of the room, but didn't dare move. Daniel, who had been silent all this time, seemed to lean forward a bit.

The old woman slowly and deliberately gathered up the worn pasteboards. Then she stood. At that moment I wished I had the pen and paper back. I longed to draw the expression on her face. Words fail the description.

"Your son will not leave prison alive," she said, every word a heavy drop of molten stone. "Already he is dying."

"You filthy old bitch," the King snarled. He snatched the sword and stood up. "You are a dead woman."

Madame Uzana didn't flinch. She merely stood there with a granite gaze and an acceptance of her own immanent death.
I thought I heard a crash in the distance, but I wasn't sure. The King held the sword in both hands like a baseball bat. I looked around for some weapon, some means of stopping him. The vase of flowers still stood on the table beside my chair. As he swung, I threw the vase at him flowers and all. It spoiled his aim and he merely gashed her arm.

Daniel bolted for the door. I paid him no attention, because the King had turned is attention to me. "You both are gonna die," he growled. His dressing gown was soaked with water and a lavender penstomen had incongruously stuck in his collar. He took a step toward me, but the old woman cracked his arm with her walking stick. He swung backhand. The sword bit deep in her neck and she was probably dead before she hit the floor. Blood sprayed across the fine Chinese rug.

At that moment the door crashed open, knocking Daniel flat. The King was only momentarily distracted and stepped toward me with a bloody sword. Inspector Monahan stood framed in the doorway with his gun in his hand, his face grim adamant. He fired. The King jerked and spun. Several uniformed policemen crowded behind the inspector and I could see Henry struggling to push past them. The King dropped the sword, blood coursing down his arm.

The King of Swords laughed bitterly and sat on the French fainting couch. He opened the gold box with one bloody hand and extracted a thin black cigarette. He darkly contemplated the body of Madame Uzana at his feet as he touched flame to the tobacco and drew the smoke slowly into his lungs.

"Good evening, Inspector," he said.