It's the result of perfectly definite factors. Some
expert players actually make use of this principle to determine the
probable location of key cards." Norman's mind went off on a tangent. Suppose you applied this principle
outside bridge? Suppose that coincidences and other chance happenings
weren't really as chancy as they looked? Suppose there were individuals
with a special aptitude for calling the turns, making the breaks? But
that was a pretty obvious idea--nothing to give a person the shiver it
had given him. "I wonder what's holding up the Gunnisons?" Professor Carr was saying. "We might start one table now. Perhaps we can get in an extra rubber,"
he added hopefully. A peal from the chimes settled the question. Gunnison looked as if he had eaten his dinner too fast, and Hulda
seemed rather surly. "We had to rush so," she muttered curtly to Norman as he held the door. Like the other two women, she almost ignored him and concentrated her
greetings on Tansy. It gave him a vaguely uneasy feeling, as when they
had first come to Hempnell and faculty visits had been a nerve-racking
chore. Tansy seemed at a disadvantage--somehow unprotected--in contrast
to the aggressive air of purpose animating the other three. But what of it?--he told himself. That was usual with Hempnell faculty
wives. They acted as if they lay awake nights plotting how to poison
the people between their husband and the president's chair. Whereas Tansy--But that was like what Tansy had been doing. His
thoughts started to gyrate confusingly, and he switched them off. They cut for partners. The cards seemed determined to provide an illustration for the theory
Carr had explained. The hands were uniformly commonplace--abnormally
average. No long suits. Nothing but 4-4-3-2 and 4-3-3-3 distribution. Bid one; make two. Bid two; make one. *       *       *       *       *

After the second round, Norman applied his private remedy for
boredom--the game of "Spot the Primitive." You played it by yourself,
secretly. It was just an exercise for an ethnologist's imagination. You
pretended that the people around you were members of a savage race,
and you tried to figure out how their personalities would manifest
themselves in such an environment. Tonight it worked almost too well. Nothing unusual about the men. Gunnison would, of course, be a
prosperous tribal chieftain; perhaps a little fatter, and tended by
maidens, but with a jealous and vindictive wife waiting to pounce. Carr
might figure as the basket maker of the village--a spry little old
man, grinning like a monkey, weaving the basket fibers into intricate
mathematical matrices. Sawtelle, of course, would be the tribal
scapegoat, butt of endless painful practical jokes. But the women! Take Mrs. Gunnison, now his partner. Give her a brown skin. Leave the
red hair, but twist some copper ornaments in it. She'd be heftier if
anything, a real mountain of a woman, stronger than most of the men in
the tribe, able to wield a spear or club. The same sleepy brutish eyes,
but the lower lip would jut out in a more openly sullen and domineering
way. It was only too easy to imagine what she'd do to the unlucky
maidens her husband showed too much interest in. Or how she would pound
tribal policy into his head when they retired to their hut. Or how her
voice would thunder out the death chants the women sang to aid the men
away at war. Then Mrs. Sawtelle and Mrs. Carr, who had progressed to the top table
along with himself and Mrs. Gunnison. Mrs. Sawtelle first. Make her
skinnier. Scarify the flat cheeks with ornamental ridges. Tattoo the
spine. Witch woman. Bitter as quinine bark because her husband was
ineffectual. Think of her prancing before a spike-studded fetish. Think
of her screeching incantations and ripping off a chicken's head--

"Norman, you're playing out of turn," said Mrs. Gunnison. "Sorry." And Mrs. Carr. Shrivel her a bit. Leave only a few wisps of hair on
the parchment skull. Take away the glasses, and then her eyes would be
gummy. She'd blink and peer short-sightedly, and leer toothlessly, and
flutter her bony claws. A nice harmless old squaw, who'd gather the
tribe's children around her and tell them legends. But her jaw would
still be able to snap like a steel trap, and her clawlike hands would
be deft at applying arrow poison, and she wouldn't really need her eyes
because she'd have other ways of seeing things and even the bravest
warrior would grow nervous if she looked too long in his direction. "Those experts at the top table are awfully quiet," called Gunnison
with a laugh. "They must be taking the game very seriously." Witch women, all three of them, engaged in booting their husbands to
the top of the tribal hierarchy. From the dark doorway at the far end of the room, Totem was peering
curiously, as if weighing some similar possibility. *       *       *       *       *

But Norman could not fit Tansy into the picture. He could visualize
physical changes, like frizzing her hair, and putting some big gold
rings in her ears and a painted design on her forehead. But he could
not picture her as belonging to the same tribe. She persisted in his
imagination as a stranger woman, a captive, eyed with suspicion and
hate by the rest. Or perhaps a woman of the same tribe, but one who had
done something to forfeit the trust of all the other women. A priestess
who had violated taboo. A witch woman who had renounced witchcraft. Abruptly his field of vision narrowed to the score pad. Evelyn Sawtelle
was idly scribbling stick figures as Mrs. Carr deliberated over a lead. First the stick figure of a man with arms raised and three or four
balls above his head, as if he were juggling. Then the stick figure
of a queen, indicated by crown and skirt. Then a little tower, with
battlements. Then an L-shaped thing with a stick figure hanging from
it--a gallows. Finally, a truck bearing down on a man whose arms were
extended toward it in fear. Just five scribbles. But he knew that four of them were connected with
a bit of unusual knowledge buried somewhere in his mind. A glance at
the exposed dummy gave him the clue. Cards. But this bit of knowledge was from the ancient history of cards, when
the whole deck was drenched with magic, when there was a Knight between
the Jack and the Queen, when the suits were swords, batons, cups, and
money, and when there were twenty-two special tarot cards in the pack,
of which today only the Joker remained. Tarot cards were used for
fortunetelling. Four of the tarot cards were the Juggler, the Empress, the Tower, and
the Hanged Man. Only the fifth stick figure, that of the man and truck, did not fit in. But it gave him a peculiarly personal shudder. Death by being crushed
or mangled, as in an automobile accident, was his pet phobia. Mrs. Sawtelle scratched out the stick figures and looked up at him
sullenly. Mrs. Gunnison leaned forward, lips moving as if she might be counting
trump. Mrs. Carr smiled, and made her lead.