At the elevator, an elderly well-dressed businessman and his wife helped her; they took the parcels for her, and downstairs in the lobby they gave them to a bellboy for her.

“Thank you,” Juliana said to them.

After the bellboy had carried her suitcase and parcels across the lobby and out onto the front sidewalk, she found a hotel employee who could explain to her how to get back her car. Soon she was standing in the cold concrete garage beneath the hotel, waiting while the attendant brought the Studebaker around. In her purse she found all kinds of change; she tipped the attendant and the next she knew she was driving up a yellow-lit ramp and onto the dark street with its headlights, cars, advertising neon signs.

The uniformed doorman of the hotel personally loaded her luggage and parcels into the trunk for her, smiling with such hearty encouragement that she gave him an enormous tip before she drove away. No one tried to stop her, and that amazed her; they did not even raise an eyebrow. I guess they know he’ll pay, she decided. Or maybe he already did when he registered for us.

While she waited with other cars for a streetlight to change, she remembered that she had not told them at the desk about Joe sitting on the floor of the room needing the doctor. Still waiting up there, waiting from now on until the end of the world, or until the cleaning women showed up tomorrow sometime. I better go back, she decided, or telephone. Stop at a pay phone booth.

It’s so silly, she thought as she drove along searching for a place to park and telephone. Who would have thought an hour ago? When we signed in, when we shopped… we almost went on, got dressed up and went out to dinner; we might even have gotten out to the nightclub. Again she had begun to cry, she discovered; tears dripped from her nose, onto her blouse, as she drove. Too bad I didn’t consult the oracle; it would have known and warned me. Why didn’t I? Any time I could have asked, any place along the trip or even before we left. She began to moan involuntarily; the noise, a howling she had never heard issue out of her before, horrified her, but she could not suppress it even though she clamped her teeth together. A ghastly chanting, singing, wailing, rising up through her nose.

When she had parked she sat with the motor running, shivering, hands in her coat pockets. Christ, she said to herself miserably. Well, I guess that’s the sort of thing that happens. She got out of the car and dragged her suitcase from the trunk; in the back seat she opened it and dug around among the clothes and shoes until she had hold of the two black volumes of the oracle. There, in the back seat of the car, with the motor running, she began tossing three RMS dimes, using the glare of a department store window to see by. What’ll I do? she asked it. Tell me what to do; please.

Hexagram Forty-two, Increase, with moving lines in the second, third, fourth and top places; therefore changing to Hexagram Forty-three, Breakthrough. She scanned the text ravenously, catching up the successive stages of meaning in her mind, gathering it and comprehending; Jesus, it depicted the situation exactly—a miracle once more. All that had happened, there before her eyes, blueprint, schematic:

Trip, to go and do something important, not stay here. Now the lines. Her lips moved, seeking…

Now six in the third. Reading, she became dizzy;

The prince… it meant Abendsen. The seal, the new copy of his book. Unfortunate events—the oracle knew what had happened to her, the dreadfulness with Joe or whatever he was. She read six in the fourth place:

I must go there, she realized, even if Joe comes after me. She devoured the last moving line, nine at the top:

Oh God, she thought; It means the killer, the Gestapo people—it’s telling me that Joe or someone like him, someone else, will get there and kill Abendsen. Quickly, she turned to Hexagram Forty-three. The judgment:

So it’s no use to go back to the hotel and make sure about him; it’s hopeless, because there will be others sent out. Again the oracle says, even more emphatically: Get up to Cheyenne and warn Abendsen, however dangerous it is to me. I must bring him the truth.

She shut the volume.

Getting back behind the wheel of the car, she backed out into traffic. In a short time she had found her way out of downtown Denver and onto the main autobahn going north; she drove as fast as the car would go, the engine making a strange throbbing noise that shook the wheel and the seat and made everything in the glove compartment rattle.

Thank God for Doctor Todt and his autobahns, she said to herself as she hurtled along through the darkness, seeing only her own headlights and the lines marking the lanes.

At ten o’clock that night because of tire trouble she had still not reached Cheyenne, so there was nothing to do but pull off the road and search for a place to spend the night.

An autobahn exit sign ahead of her read GREELEY FIVE MILES. I’ll start out again tomorrow morning, she told herself as she drove slowly along the main street of Greeley a few minutes later. She saw several motels with vacancy signs lit, so there was no problem. What I must do, she decided, is call Abendsen tonight and say I’m coming.

When she had parked she got wearily from the car, relieved to be able to stretch her legs. All day on the road, from eight in the morning on. An all-night drugstore could be made out not far down the sidewalk; hands in the pockets of her coat, she walked that way, and soon she was shut up in the privacy of the phone booth, asking the operator for Cheyenne information.

Their phone—thank God—was listed. She put in the quarters and the operator rang.

“Hello,” a woman’s voice sounded presently, a vigorous, rather pleasant younger-woman’s voice; a woman no doubt about her own age.

“Mrs. Abendsen?” Juliana said. “May I talk to Mr. Abendsen?”

“Who is this, please?”

Juliana said, “I read his book and I drove all day up from Canon City, Colorado. I’m in Greeley now. I thought I could make it to your place tonight, but I can’t, so I want to know if I can see him sometime tomorrow.”

After a pause, Mrs. Abendsen said in a still-pleasant voice, “Yes, it’s too late, now; we go to bed quite early. Was there any special reason why you wanted to see my husband? He’s working very hard right now.”