Some two hours later Madame Alexandra Vesant pushed herself back from her work table and sighed.  She had had her secretary cancel all appointments and she really had tried; several sheets of paper, covered with diagrams and figures, and a dog-eared nautical almanac were in front of her and testified to her efforts.  Alexandra Vesant differed from some other practicing astrologers in that she really did attempt to calculate the "influences" of the heavenly bodies, using a paper-backed book titled The Arcane Science of Judicial Astrology and Key to Solomon's Stone which had been given to her by her late husband, Professor Simon Magus, the well known mentalist, stage hypnotist and illusionist, and student of the secret arts.