Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 112, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 684 & 685, September/October 1998

Medium Rare by Bill Pronzini

©1998 by Bill Pronzini

The night was dark, cold; most of San Francisco was swaddled in a cloak of fog and low-hanging clouds that turned streetlights and house lights into ghostly smears. The bay, close by this residential district along lower Van Ness Avenue, was invisible and the foghorns that moaned on it had a lonely, lost-soul sound. Bittersharp, the wind nipped at Quincannon’s cheeks, fluttered his thick piratical beard as he stepped down from the hansom. A sudden gust almost tore off his derby before he could clamp it down.

A fine night for spirits, he thought wryly. The liquid kind, to be sure — except that he had been a temperance man for several years now. And the supernatural kind, in which he believed not one whit.

He helped Sabina alight from the coach, turned to survey the house at which they were about to call. It was a modest gingerbread affair, its slender front yard enclosed by a black-iron picket fence. Rented, not purchased, as he had discovered earlier in the day. Gaslight flickered behind its lace-curtained front windows. No surprise there. Professor Vargas would have been careful to select a house that had not been wired for electricity; the sometimes spectral trembles produced by gas flame were much more suited to his purposes.

On the gate was a discreet bronze sign whose raised letters gleamed faintly in the outspill from a nearby streetlamp. Sabina went to peer at the sign as Quincannon paid and dismissed the hack driver. When he joined her he, too, bent for a look.

“Bah. Hogwash,” Quincannon said grumpily, straightening. “How can any sane person believe in such hokum?”

“Self-deception is the most powerful kind.”

He made a derisive noise in his throat, a sound Sabina had once likened to the rumbling snarl of a mastiff.

She said, “If you enter growling and wearing that ferocious glare, you’ll give the game away. We’re here as potential devotees, not ardent sceptics.”

“Devotees of claptrap.”

“John, Mr. Buckley is paying us handsomely for this evening’s work. Very handsomely, if you recall.”

Quincannon recalled; his scowl faded and was replaced by a smile only those who knew him well would recognize as greed-based. Money, especially in large sums, was what soothed his savage breast. In fact, it was second only in his admiration to Sabina herself.

He glanced sideways at her. She looked even more fetching than usual this evening, dressed as she was in an outfit of black silk brocade, her raven hair topped by a stylish hat trimmed in white China silk. His mouth watered. A fine figure of a woman, Sabina Carpenter. A man engaged in the time-honored profession of detective couldn’t ask for a more decorous — or a more intelligent and capable — partner. He could, however, ask for more than a straightforward business arrangement and an occasional night on the town followed by a chaste handshake at her door. Not getting it, not even coming close to getting it, was his greatest defeat, his greatest frustration. Why, he had never even been inside Sabina’s Russian Hill flat...

“John.”

“Mmm?”

“Will you please stop staring at me that way.”

“What way, my dear?”

“Like a cat at a bowl of cream. We’ve no time for dallying; we’re late as it is. Mr. Buckley and the others will be waiting to begin the seance.”

Quincannon took her arm, chastely, and led her through the gate. As they mounted the front stairs, he had a clear vision of Cyrus Buckley’s bank check and a clear auditory recollection of the financier’s promise of the check’s twin should they successfully debunk Professor Vargas and his Unified College of the Attuned Impulses.

Buckley was a reluctant follower of spiritualism, in deference to his wife, who believed wholeheartedly in communication with the disembodied essences of the dead and such mediumistic double-talk as “spiritual vibrations of the positive and negative forces of material and astral planes.” She continually sought audiences with their daughter, Bernice, the childhood victim of diphtheria, a quest which had led them to a succession of mediums and cost her husband “a goodly sum.” Professor Vargas was the latest and by far the most financially threatening of these paranormal spirit-summoners. A recent arrival in San Francisco — from Chicago, he claimed — Vargas evidently had a more clever, extensive, and convincing repertoire of “spirit wonders” than any other medium Buckley had encountered, and of course his fees were exorbitant as a result.

The Buckleys had attended one of Vargas’s sittings a few days ago — a dark seance in a locked room in his rented house. The professor had ordered himself securely tied to his chair and then proceeded to invoke a dazzling array of bell-ringing, table-tipping, spirit lights, automatic writings, ectoplasmic manifestations, and other phenomena. As his finale, he announced that he was being unfettered by his friendly spirit guide and guardian, Angkar, and the rope that had bound him was heard to fly through the air just before the lights were turned up; the rope, when examined, was completely free of the more than ten knots which had been tied into it. This supernatural flimflam had so impressed Margaret Buckley that she had returned the next day without her husband’s knowledge and arranged for another sitting — tonight — and a series of private audiences at which Vargas promised to establish and maintain contact with the shade of the long-gone Bernice. Mrs. Buckley, in turn and in gratitude, was prepared to place unlimited funds in the medium’s eager hands. “Endow the whole damned Unified College of the Attuned Impulses,” was the way Buckley put it. Nothing he’d said or done could change his wife’s mind. The only thing that would, he was convinced, was a public unmasking of the professor as the knave and charlatan he surely was. Hence, his visit to the Market Street offices of Carpenter & Quincannon, Professional Detective Services.

Quincannon had no doubt he and Sabina could accomplish the task. They had both had dealings with phony psychics before, Sabina when she was with the Pinkertons in Denver and on two occasions since they had opened their joint agency here. But Cyrus Buckley wasn’t half so sanguine. “You’ll not have an easy time of it,” he’d warned them. “Professor Vargas is a rare bird and rare birds are not easily plucked. A medium among mediums.”

Medium rare, is he? Quincannon thought as he twisted the doorbell handle. Not for long. He’ll not only be plucked but done to a turn before this night is over.

The door was opened by a tiny woman of indeterminate age, dressed in a flowing ebon robe. Her skin was very white, her lips a bloody crimson in contrast; sleek brown hair was pulled tight around her head and fastened with a jeweled barette. Around her neck hung a silver amulet embossed with some sort of cabalistic design. “I am Annabelle,” she said in sepulchral tones. “You are Mr. and Mrs. John Quinn?”

“We are,” Quincannon said, wishing wistfully that it were true. Mr. and Mrs. John Quincannon, not Quinn. But Sabina had refused even to adopt his name for the evening’s play-acting, insisting on the shortened version instead.

Annabelle took his greatcoat and Sabina’s cape, hung them on a coat tree. According to Buckley, she was Professor Vargas’s “psychic assistant.” If she lived here with him, Quincannon mused, she was likely also his wife or mistress. Seeking communion with the afterworld did not preclude indulging in the pleasure of the earthly sphere, evidently; he had never met a medium who professed to be celibate and meant it.

“Follow me, please.”

They trailed her down a murky hallway into a somewhat more brightly lighted parlor. Here they found two men dressed as Quincannon was, in broadcloth and fresh linen, and two women in long fashionable dresses; one of the men was Cyrus Buckley. But it was the room’s fifth occupant who commanded immediate attention.

Even Quincannon, who was seldom impressed by physical stature, had to grudgingly admit that Professor A. Vargas was a rather imposing gent. Tall, dark-complected, with a curling black moustache and piercing, almost hypnotic eyes. Like his psychic assistant, he wore a long flowing black robe and a silver amulet. On the middle fingers of each hand were two enormous glittering rings of intricate design, both of which bore hieroglyphics similar to those which adorned the amulets.

He greeted his new guests effusively, pressing his lips to the back of Sabina’s hand and then pumping Quincannon’s in an iron grip. “I am Professor Vargas. Welcome, New Ones, welcome to the Unified College of the Attuned Impulses.” His voice was rich, stentorian. “Mr. and Mrs. Quinn, is it not? Friends of the good Mr. Buckley? Your first sitting but I pray not your last. You are surrounded by many anxious friends in spirit-life who desire to communicate with you once you have learned more of the laws which govern their actions. Allow your impulses to attune with theirs and your spirit friends will soon identify themselves and speak with you as in earth-life...”

There was more, but Quincannon shut his ears to it.

More introductions followed the medium’s windy come-on. Quincannon shook hands with red-faced, muttonchopped Cyrus Buckley and his portly, gray-haired wife, Margaret; with Oliver Cobb, a prominent Oakland physician who bore a rather startling resemblance to the “literary hangman,” Ambrose Bierce; and with Grace Cobb, the doctor’s much younger and attractive wife. Attractive, that is, if a man preferred an overly buxom and overly rouged blonde to a svelte brunette of Sabina’s cunning dimensions. The Cobbs, like the Buckleys, had attended the professor’s previous seance.

Margaret Buckley looked upon Vargas with the rapt gaze of a supplicant in the presence of a saint. Dr. Cobb was also a true believer, judging from the look of eager anticipation he wore. The blond Mrs. Cobb seemed to find the medium fascinating as well, but the glint in her eye was much more predatory than devout. Buckley appeared ill at ease, as if he wished the evening’s business was already finished; he kept casting glances at Quincannon which the detective studiously ignored.

Vargas asked Quincannon and Sabina if they would care for a refreshment — coffee, tea, perhaps a glass of sherry. They both declined. This seemed to relieve Buckley; he asked Vargas, “Isn’t it about time to begin the seance?”

“Soon, Mr. Buckley. The spirits must not be hurried.”

“Are they friendly tonight?” Mrs. Buckley asked. “Can you tell, dear Professor Vargas?”

“The auras are uncertain. I perceive antagonistic waves among the benign.”

“Oh, Professor!”

“Do not fear,” Vargas said. “Even if a malevolent spirit should cross the border, no harm will come to you or to any of us. Angkar will protect us.”

“But will my Bernice’s spirit be allowed through if there is a malevolent force present?”

Vargas patted her arm reassuringly. “It is my belief that she will, though I cannot be certain until the veil has been lifted. Have faith, dear Mrs. Buckley.”

Sabina asked him, “Isn’t there anything you can do to prevent a malevolent spirit from crossing over?”

“Alas, no. I am merely a teacher of the light and truth of theocratic unity, merely an operator between the Beyond and this mortal sphere.” Merely a purveyor of pap, Quincannon thought.

Grace Cobb touched Vargas’s sleeve; her fingers lingered almost caressingly. “We have faith in you, Professor.”

“In Angkar, dear lady,” Vargas told her, but his fingers caressed hers in return and the look he bestowed upon her had a smouldering quality — the same sort of cat-at-cream look, Quincannon thought, that Sabina had accused him earlier of directing at her. “Place your faith in Angkar and the spirit world.”

Quincannon asked him, “Angkar is your spirit guide and guardian angel?”

“Yes. He lived more than a thousand years past and his spirit has ascended to one of the highest planes in the Afterworld.”

“A Hindu, was he?”

Vargas seemed mildly offended. “Not at all, my dear sir. Angkar was an Egyptian nobleman in the court of Nebuchadnezzar.”

Quincannon managed to refrain from pointing out that Nebuchadnezzar was not an Egyptian but the king of Babylon and conqueror of Jerusalem some six centuries B.C. Not that any real harm would have been done if he had mentioned the fact; Vargas would have covered by claiming he had meant Nefertiti or some such. None of the others, except Sabina perhaps, seemed to notice the error.

Sabina said, “Those rings are most impressive, Professor. Are they Egyptian?”

“This one is.” Vargas presented his left hand. “An Egyptian Signet and Seal Talisman Ring, made from virgin gold. It preserves its wearer against ill luck and wicked influences.” He offered his right hand. “This is the Ring of King Solomon. Its Chaldaic inscription stands as a reminder to the wearer that no matter what his troubles may be, they shall soon be gone. The inscription — here — translates as ‘This shall also pass.’ ”

“Oh, Professor Vargas,” Mrs. Buckley gushed, “you’re so knowledgeable, so wise in so many ways.”

Quincannon’s dinner stirred ominously under his breastbone.

He was spared further discomfort, at least for the present, by the entrance of the psychic assistant, Annabelle. She announced, “All is in readiness, Professor,” and without waiting for a response, glided out again.

“Good ladies and gentlemen,” Vargas said, “before we enter the spirit room may I accept your most kind and welcome donations to the Unified College of the Attuned Impulses, so that we may continue in our humble efforts to bring the psychic and material planes into closer harmony?”

Quincannon paid for himself and Sabina — the outrageous “New Ones” donation of fifty dollars each. If he had not been assured of reimbursement from their client, he would have been much more grudging than he was in handing over the greenbacks. Buckley was tight-lipped as he paid, and sweat oiled his neck and the lower of his two chins; the look he gave Quincannon was a mute plea not to botch the job he and Sabina had been hired to do. Only Dr. Cobb ponied up with what appeared to be genuine enthusiasm.

The medium casually dropped the wad of bills onto a table, as if money mattered not in the slightest to him personally, and led them out of the parlor, down the gloomy hallway, and then into a large chamber at the rear. The “spirit room” contained quite a few more accoutrements than the parlor, of greater variety and a more unusual nature. The floor was covered by a thick Oriental carpet of dark blue and black design. Curtains made of the same ebon material as the professor’s and Annabelle’s robes blotted the windows, and the gaslight had been turned low enough so that shadows crouched in all four corners. The overheated air was permeated with the smell of incense; Quincannon, who hated the stuff, immediately began to breathe through his mouth. The incense came from a burner on the mantel of a small fireplace — a horsey-looking bronze monstrosity with tusks as well as equine teeth and a shaggy mane and beard.

The room’s centerpiece was an oval, highly polished table around which six straight-backed chairs were arranged; a seventh chair, larger than the others, with a high seat and arms raised on a level with that of the tabletop, was placed at the head. Along the walls were a short, narrow sideboard of Oriental design, made of teak, with an intricately inlayed center top; a tall-backed rococo love seat; and an alabaster pedestal atop which sat a hideous bronze statue of an Egyptian male in full headdress — a representation, evidently, of the mythical Angkar. In the middle of the table was a clear-glass jar, a tiny silver bell suspended inside. On the sideboard were a silver tray containing several bottles of various sizes and shapes, a tambourine, and a stack of children’s school slates with black wooden frames. Propped against the wall nearby was an ordinary-looking three-stringed guitar. And on the high seat of the armchair lay a coil of sturdy rope Quincannon estimated as some three yards in length.

When the sitters were all inside and loosely grouped near the table, Vargas closed the door, produced a large brass key from a pocket in his robe, and proceeded with a flourish to turn the key in the latch. After which he brought the key to the sideboard and set it beside the tray in plain sight. While this was being done, Quincannon eased over in front of the door and tested it behind his back to determine if it was in fact locked. It was.

Still at the sideboard, Vargas announced that before they formed the “mystic circle” two final preparations were necessary. Would one of the good believers be so kind as to assist him in the first of these? Quincannon stepped forward just ahead of Dr. Cobb.

The medium said, “Mr. Quinn, will you kindly examine each of the slates you see before you and tell us if they are as they seem-ordinary writing slates?”

Quincannon examined them more carefully than any of the devotees would have. “Quite ordinary,” he said.

“Select two, if you please, write your name on each with this slate pencil, and then place them together and tie them securely with your handkerchief.”

When Quincannon had complied, Vargas took the bound slates and placed them in the middle of the stack. “If the spirits are willing,” he said, “a message will be left for you beneath the signatures. Perhaps from a loved one who has passed beyond the pale, perhaps from a friendly spirit who may be in tune with your particular psychic impulses. Discarnate forces are never predictable, you understand.”

Quincannon nodded and smiled with his teeth.

“We may now be seated and form the mystic circle.”

When each of the sitters had selected and was standing behind a chair, Sabina to the medium’s immediate left and Quincannon directly across from him, both by prearrangement, Vargas again called for a volunteer. This time it was Dr. Cobb who stepped up first. Vargas handed him the coiled rope and seated himself in the high chair, his forearms flat on the chair arms with only his wrists and hands extended beyond the edges. He then instructed Cobb to bind him securely — arms, legs, and chest — to the chair, using as many knots as possible. Quincannon watched closely as this was done. He caught Sabina’s eye when the doctor finished; she dipped her chin to acknowledge that she too had spotted the gaff in this phase of the professor’s game.

Cobb, with Buckley’s help, moved Vargas’s chair closer to the table, so that his hands and wrists rested on the surface. Smiling, the medium asked the others to take their seats. As Quincannon sat down he bumped against the table, then reached down to feel one of its legs. As he’d expected, the table was much less heavy than it appeared to be at a glance. He stretched out a leg and with the toe of his shoe explored the carpet. The floor beneath seemed to be solid, but the nap was thick enough so that he couldn’t be certain.

Vargas instructed everyone to spread their hands, the fingers of the left to grasp the wrist of the person on that side; thus one hand of each person was holding and the other was being held. “Once we begin,” he said, “attempt to empty your minds of all thought, to keep them as blank as the table’s surface throughout. And remember, you must not move either hands or feet during the seance — you must not under any circumstances break the mystic circle. To do so could have grave consequences. There have been instances where inattention and disobedience have been fatal to sensitives such as myself.”

The professor closed his eyes, let his chin lower slowly to his chest. After a few seconds he commenced a whispering chant, a mixture of English and simulated Egyptian in which he called for the door to the spirit world to open and the shades of the departed to pass through and reveal their presence. While this was going on, the lights began to dim as if in phantasmical response to Vargas’s exhortations. The phenomenon elicited a shivery gasp from Margaret Buckley, but Quincannon was unimpressed. Gaslight in one room was easily controlled from another — in this case by the assistant, Annabelle, at a prearranged time or on some sort of signal.

The shadows congealed until the room was in utter darkness. Vargas’s chanting ceased abruptly; the silence deepened as it lengthened. Long minutes passed with no sounds except for the somewhat asthmatic breathing of Cyrus Buckley, the rustle of a dress or shuffle of a foot on the carpet. A palpable tension began to build. Sweat formed on Quincannon’s face, not from any tension but from the overheated air. He was not a man given to fancies, but he was forced to admit that there was an eerie quality to sitting in total blackness this way, waiting for something to happen. Spiritualist mediums counted on this reaction, of course. The more keyed up their dupes became, the more eager they were to believe in the incredible things they were about to witness; and the more eager they were, the more easily they could be fooled by their own senses.

Someone coughed, a sudden sharp sound that made even Quincannon twitch involuntarily. He thought the cough had come from Vargas, but in such stifling darkness you couldn’t he certain of the direction of any sound. Even when the medium spoke again, the words might have come from anywhere in the room.

“Angkar is with us. I feel his presence.”

On Quincannon’s left, Dr. Cobb stirred and their knees bumped together; Mrs. Buckley, on his right, brought forth another of her shivery gasps.

“Will you speak to us tonight, Angkar? Will you answer our questions in the language of the dead and guide us among your fellow spirits? Please grant our humble request. Please answer yes.”

The silver bell inside the jar rang once, muted but clear.

“Angkar has consented. He will speak, he will lead us. He will ring the bell once for yes to each question he is asked, twice for no, for that is the language of the dead. Will someone ask him a question? Doctor Cobb?”

“I will,” Cobb’s voice answered. “Angkar, is my brother Philip well and happy on the Other Side?”

The bell tinkled once.

“Will he appear to us in his spirit form?”

Yes.

“Will it be tonight?”

Silence.

Vargas said, “Angkar is unable to answer that question yet. Please ask another.”

There was a good deal more of this, with questions from Cobb, his wife, and Mrs. Buckley. Then Vargas called on Sabina to ask the spirit guide a question.

She obliged by saying, “Angkar, tell me please, is my little boy John with you? He was always such a bad little boy that I fear for his poor troubled soul.”

Yes, he is one of us.

No, he is not here tonight.

“Has he learned humility and common sense, two qualities which he lacked on this earthly sphere?”

Yes.

“And has he learned to take no for an answer?”

Yes.

Quincannon scowled in the darkness. Although Sabina had been married once, she had no children. The “little boy John” was her doting partner, of course. Having a bit of teasing fun at his expense while at the same time establishing proof of Vargas’s deceit.

“Mr. Quinn?” the professor said. “Will you ask Angkar a question?”

He might not have responded as he did if the heat and the sickly sweet incense hadn’t given him a headache. But his head throbbed, and Sabina’s playfulness rankled, and the words were out of his mouth before he could bite them back. “Oh yes, indeed,” he said. “Angkar, will my dear wife ever consent to share my cold and lonely bed?”

Shocked murmurs, a muffled choking sound that might have come from Sabina, rose around him. The bell was silent. And then, without warning, the table seemed to stir and tremble beneath Quincannon’s outstretched hands. Its smooth surface rippled; a faint creak sounded from somewhere underneath. In the next instant the table tilted sideways, turned and rocked and wobbled as if it had been injected with a life of its own. The agitated movements continued for several seconds, stopped altogether — and then the table lifted completely off the floor, seemed to float in the air for another two or three heartbeats before finally thudding back onto the carpet. Throughout all of this, the silver bell inside the jar remained conspicuously silent.

“Mr. Quinn, you have angered Angkar.” The medium’s voice was sharply reproachful. “He finds your question inappropriate, frivolous, even mocking. He may deny us further communication and return to the Afterworld.”

Mrs. Buckley cried, “Oh no, please, he mustn’t go!”

Cobb said angrily, “Damn your eyes, Quinn—”

“Silence!” Vargas, in a sibilant whisper. “We must do nothing more to disturb the spirits or the consequences may be dire. Do not move or speak. Do not break the circle.”

The stuffy blackness closed down again. It was an effort for Quincannon to hold still. He regretted his question, though not because of any effect on Angkar and his discarnate legion; he was sure that the table-tipping and levitation would have taken place in any event. His regret was that he had allowed Sabina to glimpse the depth of his frustration, and into the bargain added weight to her already erroneous idea of the nature of his passion. Seduction wasn’t his game; his affection for her was genuine, abiding. Hell and damn! Now it might take him days, even weeks, to undo the damage done by his profligate tongue—

A sound burst the heavy stillness, a jingling that was not of the silver bell in the jar. The tambourine that had been on the sideboard. Its jingling continued, steady, almost musical in an eerily discordant way.

Vargas’s whisper was fervent. “Angkar is still present. He has forgiven Mr. Quinn, permitted us one more chance to communicate with the spirits he has brought with him.”

Mrs. Buckley: “Praise Angkar! Praise the spirits!”

The shaking of the tambourine ended. And all at once a ghostly light, pale and vaporous, appeared at a distance overhead, hovered, and then commenced a swirling motion that created faint luminous streaks on the wall of dead black. One of the sitters made an ecstatic throat noise. The swirls slowed, the light stilled again for a moment; then it began to rise until it seemed to hover just below the ceiling, and at last it faded away entirely. Other lights, mere pinpricks, flicked on and off, moving this way and that as if a handful of fireflies had been released in the room.

A thin, moaning wail erupted.

The pinpricks of light vanished.

Quincannon, listening intently, heard a faint ratchety noise followed by a strumming chord. The vaporous light reappeared, now in a different location closer to the floor; at the edge of its glow the guitar could be seen to leap into the air, to gyrate this way and that with no hand upon it. The strumming chord replayed and was joined by others — strange music that sounded and yet did not sound as though it were being made by the strings.

For three, four, five seconds the guitar continued its levitating dance, seemingly playing a tune upon itself. Then the glow once more faded, and when it was gone the music ceased and the guitar twanged to rest on the carpet.

Nearly a minute passed in electric silence.

Grace Cobb shrieked, “A hand! I felt a hand brush against my cheek!”

Vargas warned, “Do not move, do not break the circle.”

Something touched Quincannon’s neck, a velvety caress that lifted the short hairs there and bristled them like a cat’s fur. If the fingers — they felt exactly like cold, lifeless fingers — had lingered he would have ignored the professor’s remonstration and made an attempt to grab and hold onto them. But the hand or whatever it was slid away almost immediately.

Moments later it materialized long enough for it to be identifiable as just that — a disembodied hand. Then it was gone as if it had never been there at all.

Another period of silence.

The unearthly moan again.

And a glowing face appeared, as disembodied as the hand, above where Dr. Cobb sat.

The face was a man’s, shrouded as if in a kind of whitish drapery that ran right around it and was cut off at a straight line on the lower part. The eyes were enormous black-rimmed holes. The mouth moved, formed words in a deep-throated rumble.

“Oliver? It’s Philip, Oliver.”

“Philip! I’m so glad you’ve come at long last.” Cobb’s words were choked with feeling. “Are you well?”

“I am well. But I cannot stay long. The Auras have allowed me to make contact but now I must return.”

“Yes... yes, I understand.”

“I will come again. For a longer visit next time, Oliver. Next time...”

The face was swallowed by darkness.

More minutes crept away. Quincannon couldn’t tell how many; he had lost all sense of time and space in the suffocating dark.

A second phantomlike countenance materialized, this one high above Margaret Buckley’s chair. It was shimmery, indistinct behind a hazy substance like a luminous veil. The words that issued from it were an otherworldly, childlike quaver — the voice of a little girl.

“Mommy? Is that you, Mommy?”

“Oh, thank God! Bernice!” Margaret Buckley’s cry was rapturous. “Cyrus, it’s our darling Bernice!”

Her husband made no response.

“I love you, Mommy. Do you love me?”

“Oh yes! Bernice, dearest, I prayed and prayed you’d come. Are you happy in the Afterworld? Tell Mommy.”

“Yes, I’m very happy. But I must go back now.”

“No, not so soon! Bernice, wait—”

“Will you come again, Mommy? Promise me you’ll come again. Then the Auras will let me come too.”

“I’ll come, darling, I promise!”

The radiant image vanished.

Mrs. Buckley began to weep softly.

Quincannon was fed up with this hokum. Good and angry, too. It was despicable enough for fake mediums to dupe the gullible, but when they resorted to the exploitation of a middle-aged woman’s yearning for her long-dead child the game became intolerable. The sooner he and Sabina put a finish to it, the better for all concerned. If there was even one more materialization...

There wasn’t. He heard scratchings, the unmistakable sound of the slate pencil writing on a slate. This was followed by yet another protracted silence, broken only by the faintest of scraping and clicking sounds that Quincannon couldn’t identify.

Vargas said abruptly, “The spirits have grown restless. All except Angkar are returning now to the land beyond the Border. Angkar will leave too, but first he will free me from my bonds, just as one day we will all be freed from our mortal ties—”

The last word was chopped off in a meaty smacking noise and an explosive grunt of pain. Another smack, a gurgling moan. Sabina called out in alarm, “John! Something’s happened to Vargas!” Other voices rose in frightened confusion. Quincannon pushed up from the table, fumbling in his pocket for a lucifer. His thumbnail scratched it alight.

In the smoky flare he saw the others scrambling to their feet around the table, all except Professor Vargas. The medium, still roped to his chair, was slumped forward with his chin on his chest, unmoving. Quincannon kicked his own chair out of the way, carried the lucifer across to the nearest wall sconce. The gas was off; he turned it, and applied the flame. Flickery light burst forth, chasing shadows back into the room’s corners.

Outside in the hallway, hands began to beat on the door panel. Annabelle’s voice rose shrilly: “Let me in! I heard a cry... let me in!”

“Dear Lord, he’s been stabbed!”

The exclamation came from Cyrus Buckley. There were other cries overriden by a shriek from Mrs. Buckley; Quincannon turned in time to see her swoon in her husband’s arms. He ran to where Sabina stood staring down at the medium’s slumped body.

Stabbed, for a fact. The weapon, a dagger whose ornate hilt bore a series of hieroglyphics, jutted from the back of his neck. Another wound, the first one struck for it still oozed blood, showed through a rent in Vargas’s robe lower down, between the shoulder blades.

Ashen-faced, Dr. Cobb bent to feel for a pulse in the professor’s neck. He shook his head and said, “Expired,” a few moments later.

“It isn’t possible,” his wife whispered. “How could he have been stabbed?”

Buckley had lowered his wife onto one of the chairs and was fanning her flushed face with his hand. He said shakily, “How — and by whom?”

Quincannon caught Sabina’s eye. She wagged her head to tell him she didn’t know, or couldn’t be sure, what had happened in those last few seconds of darkness.

The psychic assistant, Annabelle, was still beating on the door, clamoring for admittance. Quincannon went to the sideboard. The brass key lay where Vargas had set it down before the seance began; he used it to unlock the door. Annabelle rushed in from the dark hallway, her eyes wide and fearful. She gave a little moan when she saw Vargas and ran to his side, knelt to peer into his dead face.

When she straightened again her own face was as white as milk. She said tremulously, “One of you did this?”

“No,” Dr. Cobb told her. “It couldn’t have been one of us. No one broke the circle until after the professor was stabbed.”

“Then... it was the spirits.”

“He did perceive antagonistic waves tonight. But why would a malevolent spirit—?”

“He made all the Auras angry. I warned him but he didn’t listen.” Sabina said, “How did he make the Auras angry, Annabelle?”

The woman shuddered and shook her head. Then her eyes shifted into a long stare across the room. “The slates,” she said.

“What about the slates?”

“Did the spirits leave a message? Have you looked?”

Quincannon swung around to the sideboard; the others, except for Margaret Buckley, crowded close behind him. The tied slates were in the center of the stack where Vargas had placed them. He pulled those two out, undid the knot in his handkerchief, parted them for his eyes and the eyes of the others.

Murmurs and a mildly blasphemous exclamation from Buckley.

In a ghostlike hand beneath the “John Quinn” signatures on each, one message upside down and backwards as if it were a mirror image of the other, was written: I Angkar destroyed the evil one.

“Angkar!” Dr. Cobb said. “Why would the professor’s guide and guardian turn on him that way?”

“The spirits are not mocked,” Annabelle said. “They know evil when it is done in their name and guardian becomes avenger.”

“Madam, what are you saying?”

“I warned him,” she said again. “He would not listen and now he has paid the price. His torment will continue on the Other Side, until his essence has been cleansed of wickedness.”

Quincannon said, “Enough talk and speculation,” in authoritarian tones that swiveled all heads in his direction. “There’ll be time for that later. Now there’s work to be done.”

“Quite right,” Cobb agreed. “The police—”

“Not the police, Doctor. Not yet.”

“Here, Quinn, who are you to take charge?”

“The name isn’t Quinn, it’s Quincannon. John Quincannon. Of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services.”

Cobb gaped at him. “A detective? You?”

“Two detectives.” He gestured to Sabina. “My partner, Mrs. Carpenter.”

“A woman?” Grace Cobb said. She sounded as shocked as if Sabina had been revealed as a soiled dove.

Sabina, testily: “And why not, pray tell?”

Dr. Cobb: “Who hired you? Who brought you here under false pretenses?”

Quincannon and Sabina both looked at Buckley. To his credit, the financier wasted no time in admitting he was their client.

“You, Cyrus?” Margaret Buckley had revived and was regarding them dazedly. “I don’t understand. Why would you engage detectives?”

Before her husband could reply, Quincannon said, “Mr. Buckley will explain in the parlor. Be so good, all of you, as to go there and wait.”

“For what?” Cobb demanded.

“For Mrs. Carpenter and me to do what no other detective, police officer, or private citizen can do half so well.” False modesty was not one of Quincannon’s character flaws, despite Sabina’s occasional attempts to convince him otherwise. “Solve a baffling crime.”

No one protested, although Dr. Cobb wore an expression of disapproval and Annabelle said, “What good are earthly detectives when it is the spirits who have taken vengeance?” as they left the room. Within a minute Quincannon and Sabina were alone with the dead man.

Quincannon turned the key in the lock to ensure their privacy. He said then, “Well, my dear, a pretty puzzle, eh?”

Instead of answering, Sabina fetched him a stinging slap that rattled his eyelids. “That,” she said, “is for the rude remark about sharing your bed.”

For once, he was speechless. He might have argued that she had precipitated the remark with her own sly comments, but this was neither the time nor the place. Besides, he could not recall ever having won an argument with Sabina over anything of consequence. There had been numerous draws, yes, but never a clear-cut victory. At times he felt downright impotent in her presence. Impotent in the figurative sense of the word, of course.

“Now then,” she said briskly, “shall we see if we can make good on your boast?”

They proceeded first to extinguish the incense burner and to open a window so that cold night air could refresh the room, and then with an examination of the walls, fireplace, and floor. All were solid; there were no secret openings, crawlspaces, hidey holes, or trapdoors. Quincannon then went to inspect the corpse, while Sabina examined the jar-encased bell on the table.

The first thing he noticed was that although the rope still bound Professor Vargas to his chair, it was somewhat loose across forearms and sternum. When he lifted the limp left hand he found that it had been freed of the bonds. Vargas’s right foot had also been freed. Confirmation of his suspicions in both cases. He had also more or less expected his next discovery, the two items concealed inside the sleeve of the medium’s robe.

He was studying the items when Sabina said, “Just as I thought. The jar was fastened to the table with gum adhesive.”

“Can you pry it loose?”

“I already have. The clapper on the bell—”

“—is either missing or frozen. Eh?”

“Frozen. Vargas used another bell to produce his spirit rings, obviously.”

“This one.” Quincannon held up the tiny handbell with its gauze-muffled clapper. “Made and struck so as to produce a hollow ring, as if it were coming from the bell inside the jar. The directionless quality of sounds in total darkness, and the power of suggestion, completed the deception.”

“What else have you got there?”

He showed her the second item from Vargas’s sleeve.

“A reaching rod,” she said. “Mmm, yes.”

Quincannon said, “His left hand was holding yours on the table. Could you tell when he freed it?”

“No, and I was waiting for just that. I think he may have done it when he coughed. You recall?”

“I do.”

“He was really quite cunning,” Sabina said. “A charlatan among charlatans, to paraphrase Mr. Buckley.”

Medium rare, Quincannon thought again, and now medium dead. Plucked and done to a turn, for a fact, though not at all in the way anticipated. “Have you a suggestion as to who stabbed him?”

“None yet, except that it wasn’t Angkar or any other supernatural agency. Annabelle may believe in spirits who wield daggers, but I don’t.”

“Nor I.”

“One of the others at the table. A person clever enough to break the circle in the same way Vargas did and then to stand up, commit the deed, and return to his chair — all in utter darkness.”

“Doesn’t seem possible, does it?”

“No more impossible than any of the other humbug we witnessed tonight. We’ve encountered such enigmas before, John.”

“Too often for my liking. Well, we already have some of the answers to the evening’s queer show. Find the rest and we’ll solve the riddle of Vargas’s death as well.”

One of the missing answers came from an examination of the professor’s mystic rings. The one on his left hand that he had referred to as an Egyptian Signet and Seal Talisman Ring had a hidden fingernail catch; when it was flipped, the entire top hinged upward to reveal a small sturdy hook within. Quincannon had no doubt that were he to get down on all fours and peer under the table where the medium sat, he would find a tiny metal eye screwed to the wood.

The miraculous self-playing guitar, which of course was nothing of the kind, drew him next. He already knew how its dancing levitation had been managed; a close scrutiny of the instrument revealed the rest of the gaff.

“John, look at this.”

Sabina was at the sideboard, fingering a small bottle. When he’d set the guitar down and joined her he saw that she had removed the bottle’s glass stopper. “This was among the others on the tray,” she told him, and held it up for him to sniff its contents.

“Ah,” he said. “Almond oil.”

“Mixed with white phosphorous, surely.”

He nodded. “The contents of the other bottles?”

“Liquor and incense oils. Nothing more than window dressing.”

Quincannon stood looking at the sideboard. At length he knelt and ran his hands over its smooth front, its fancily inlayed center top. There seemed to be neither doors nor a way to lift open the top, as if the sideboard might be a sealed wooden box. This proved not to be the case, however. It took him several minutes to locate the secret spring catch, cleverly concealed as it was among the dark-squared inlays. As soon as he pressed it, the catch released noiselessly and the entire top slid up and back on oiled hinges.

The interior was a narrow, hollow space — a box, in fact, that seemed more like a child’s toy chest than a sideboard. A clutch of items were pushed into one corner. Quincannon lifted them out one by one.

A yard or two of white silk.

Another yard of fine white netting, so fine that it could be wadded into a ball no larger than a walnut.

A two-foot-square piece of black cloth.

A small container of safety matches.

A theatrical mask.

And a pair of rubber gloves almost but not quite identical, both of which had been stuffed with cotton and dipped in melted paraffin.

He returned each item to the sideboard, finally closed the lid. He said with satisfaction, “That leaves only the writing on the slates. And we know now how that was done, don’t we, my dear?”

“And how Professor Vargas was murdered.”

“And by whom.”

They smiled at each other. Smiles that gleamed wolfishly in the trembling gaslight.

Neither the Buckleys nor the Cobbs took kindly to being ushered back into the seance room, even though Quincannon had moved both Vargas’s body and chair away from the table and draped them with a cloth Sabina had found in another room. There was some grumbling when he asked them to assume their former positions around the table, but they all complied. A seventh chair had been added at Vargas’s place; he invited Annabelle to sit there. She, too, complied, maintaining a stoic silence.

Buckley asked, “Will this take long, Quincannon? My wife has borne the worst of this ordeal. She isn’t well.”

“Not long, Mr. Buckley, I assure you.”

“Is it absolutely necessary for us to be in here?”

“It is.” Quincannon looked around at the others. “We have nothing to fear from the dead, past or present. The spirits were not responsible for what took place here tonight. Not any of it.”

Grace Cobb: “Are you saying one of us stabbed Professor Vargas?”

Annabelle: “No. It was Angkar. You mustn’t deny the spirits. The penalties—”

“A pox on the penalties,” Quincannon said. “Professor Vargas was murdered by a living, flesh-and-blood individual.”

Dr. Cobb: “Who? If you’re so all-fired certain it was one of us, name him.”

“Perhaps it was you, Doctor.”

“See here—! What motive could I possibly have?”

“Any one of several. Such as a discovery prior to tonight that Vargas was a fake—”

“A fake!”

“—and you were so enraged by his duplicity that you determined to put a stop to it once and for all.”

“Preposterous.”

Quincannon was enjoying himself now. Dramatic situations appealed to his nature; he was, as Sabina had more than once pointed out, a bit of a ham. He turned his gaze on Grace Cobb. “Or you, Mrs. Cobb. Perhaps you’re the guilty party.”

She regarded him haughtily. “If that is an accusation—”

“Not at all. Merely a suggestion of possibility, of hidden motives of your own.” Such as an interest in the medium that had gone beyond the spiritual and ended in a spurned lover’s — or even a blackmail victim’s — murderous rage.

“Or it could be you, Mr. Buckley, and your hiring of Carpenter and Quincannon but a smokescreen to hide your lethal intentions for this evening.”

The financier’s eyes glittered with anger. Sabina said warningly, “That’ll do, John.”

“It had better do,” Buckley said, “if you entertain any hope of receiving the balance of your fee. You know full well neither I nor my wife ended that scoundrel’s life.”

Dr. Cobb: “I don’t see how it could have been any of us. We were all seated here — all except Annabelle, and she was on the other side of the locked door. And none of us broke the circle.”

“Are you certain of that, Doctor?” Quincannon asked.

“Of course I’m certain.”

“But you’re wrong. Vargas himself broke it.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Not at all. Neither impossible nor difficult to manage.”

“Why would he do such a thing? For a medium to break the mystic circle is to risk the wrath of the spirits, endanger his own life. He told us so himself.”

“He had already incurred the wrath of the Auras,” Annabelle said fervidly. “It was Angkar, I tell you. Angkar who plunged the dagger into his body—”

Quincannon ignored her. He said to no one in particular, “You don’t seem to have grasped my words to you a minute ago. Professor Vargas was a fake. The Unified College of the Attuned Impulses is a fake. He was no more sensitive to the spirit world than you or I or President Cleveland.”

“That... that can’t be true!” Margaret Buckley’s face was strained, her eyes feverish. “Everything we saw and heard tonight... the visitations... my daughter...”

“Sham and illusion, the lot of it,” Sabina said gently. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Buckley.”

“But... but how...”

“We’ll explain,” Quincannon told her, “all of Vargas’s tricks during the seance. To begin with, the way in which he freed his left hand while seeming to maintain an unbroken clasp of hands.

“The essence of that trick lies in the fact that the hand consists of both a wrist and fingers and the wrist is able to bend in different directions. The fingers of Vargas’s left hand, you remember, were holding Mrs. Carpenter’s wrist, while Mrs. Cobb’s fingers were gripping his right wrist. By maneuvering his hands closer and closer together as he talked, in a series of small spasmodic movements, he also brought the ladies’ hands closer together. When they were near enough for his own thumbs to touch, he freed his left hand in one quick movement and immediately reestablished control with his right — the same hand’s fingers holding Mrs. Carpenter while its wrist was being gripped by Mrs. Cobb.”

Buckley: “But how could he manage that when we were all concentrating on tight control?”

“He coughed once, rather loudly, if you recall. The sound was a calculated aural distraction. In that instant — and an instant was all it took — he completed the maneuver. He also relied on the fact that a person’s senses become unreliable after a protracted period of sitting in total darkness. What you think you see, hear, feel at any given moment may in fact be partly or completely erroneous.”

There was a brief silence while the others digested this. Dr. Cobb said then, “Even with one hand free, how could he have rung the spirit bell? I bound him myself, Quincannon, and I am morally certain the loops and knots were tight.”

“You may be certain in your own mind, Doctor, but the facts are otherwise. It is a near impossibility for anyone, even a professional detective, to securely tie a man to a chair with a single length of rope. And you were flurried, self-conscious, anxious to acquit yourself well of the business, and you are a gentleman besides. You would hardly bind a man such as Professor Vargas, whom you admired and respected, with enough constriction of the rope to cut into his flesh. A fraction of an inch of slack is all a man who has been tied many times before, who is skilled in muscular control, requires in order to free one hand.”

Cobb was unable to refute the logic of this. He lapsed into a somewhat daunted silence as Quincannon went on to explain and demonstrate the bell-ringing trick.

“Next we have the table-tipping and levitation. Vargas accomplished this phenomenon with but one hand and one foot, the right lower extremity having been freed with the aid of the upper left.” Quincannon had removed the Egyptian talisman ring from the medium’s finger; he held it up, released the fingernail catch to reveal the hook within. “He attached this hook to a small eye screwed beneath the table, after which he gave a sharp upward jerk. The table legs on his end were lifted off the carpet just far enough for him to slip the toe of his shoe under one of them, thus creating a ‘human clamp’ which gave him full control of the table. By lifting with his ring and elevating his toe while the heel remained on the carpet, he was able to make the table tilt, rock, gyrate at will.”

Sabina added, “And when he was ready for the table to appear to levitate, he simply unhooked his ring and thrust upward with his foot, withdrawing it immediately afterward. The illusion of the table seeming to float under our hands for a second or two before it fell was enhanced by both the circumstances and the darkness.”

Buckley, with some bitterness: “Seems so blasted obvious when explained.”

“Such flummery always is, Mr. Buckley. It’s the trappings and manipulation that make it mystifying. The so-called spirit lights is another example.” Sabina placed the stoppered glass bottle on the table and described where she’d found it and what it contained. “Mix white phosphorous with any fatty oil, and the result is a bottle filled with hidden light. As long as the bottle remains stoppered the phosphorous gives off no glow, but as soon as the cork is removed and air is permitted to reach the phosphorous, a faint unearthly shine results. Wave the bottle in the air and the light seems to dart about. Replace the stopper and the light fades away as the air inside is used up.”

“The little winking lights were more of the same, I suppose?”

“Not quite,” Quincannon said. “Match-heads were their source. Hold a match-head between the moistened forefinger and thumb of each hand, wiggle the forefinger enough to expose and then once more quickly conceal the match-head, and you have flitting fireflies.”

Grace Cobb asked, “The guitar that seemed to dance and play itself — how was that done?”

Quincannon fetched the guitar, brought it back to the table.

Beside it he set the reaching rod from Vargas’s sleeve. The rod was only a few inches in length when closed, but when he opened out each of its sections after the fashion of a telescope, it extended the full length of the table and beyond — more than six feet overall. “Vargas extended this rod in his left hand,” he said, “inserted it in the hole in the neck of the instrument, raised and slowly turned the guitar this way and that to create the illusion of air-dancing. As for the music...”

He reached into the hole under the strings, gave a quick twist. The weird strumming they had heard during the seance began to emanate from within.

Mrs. Cobb: “A music box!”

“A one-tune music box, to be precise, affixed to the wood inside with gum adhesive.”

Buckley: “The hand that touched Mrs. Cobb’s cheek? The manifestations? The spirit writing on the slate?”

“All part and parcel of the same flummery,” Quincannon told him. Again he went to the sideboard, where he pressed the hidden release to raise its top. From inside he took out the two stuffed and wax-coated rubber gloves, held them up for the others to view.

“These are the ghostly fingers that touched Mrs. Cobb and my neck as well. The smoothness of the paraffin gives them the feel of human flesh. One ‘hand’ has been treated with luminous paint; it was kept covered under this” — he showed them the black cloth — “until the time came to reveal it as a glowing disembodied entity.”

He lifted out the silk drapery and theatrical mask. “The mask has been treated in the same way. The combination of these two items was used to create the manifestation alleged to be Philip Cobb.”

He raised the fine white netting. “Likewise made phosphorescent and draped over the head to create the manifestation purported to be the Buckleys’ daughter.”

“But... I heard Bernice speak,” Margaret Buckley said weakly. “It was her voice, I’m sure it was...”

Her husband took her hand in both of his. “No, Margaret, it wasn’t. You only imagined it to be.”

“An imitation of a child’s voice,” Quincannon said, “just as the other voice was an imitation of a man’s deep articulation.”

He picked up the two slates which bore the “spirit message” under his false signatures. “ ‘I Angkar destroyed the evil one.’ Vargas’s murderer wrote those words, in sequence on one slate and upside down and backwards on the other to heighten the illusion of spirit writing. Before the murder was done, in anticipation of it.”

“Who?” Buckley demanded. “Name the person, Quincannon.”

“Professor Vargas’s accomplice, of course.”

“Accomplice?”

“Certainly. No one individual, no matter how skilled in supernatural fakery, could have arranged and carried out all the tricks we were subjected to, even if he hadn’t been roped to his chair. Someone else had to direct the reaching rod to the guitar and then turn the spring on the music box. Someone else had to jangle the tambourine, make the wailing noises, carry the phosphorous bottle to different parts of the room and up onto the love seat there so as to make the light seem to float near the ceiling. Someone else had to manipulate the waxed gloves, don the mask and drapery and netting, imitate the spirit voices.”

“Annabelle? Are you saying it was Annabelle?”

“None other.”

They all stared at the pale, silent woman at the head of the table. Her expression remained frozen, but her gaze burned with a zealot’s fire.

Dr. Cobb said, “But she wasn’t in the room with us...”

“Ah, but she was, Doctor. At first I believed her to have been in another part of the house — not because of the locked door but because of the way in which the lights dimmed and extinguished to begin the seance. It seemed she must have turned the gas off at a prearranged time. Not so. Some type of automatic timing mechanism was used for that purpose. Annabelle, you see, was already present here before the rest of us entered and Vargas locked the door.”

“Before, you say?”

“She disappeared from the parlor, you’ll recall, as soon as she announced that all was in readiness. While Vargas detained us with his call for ‘donations,’ Annabelle slipped into this room and hid herself.”

“Where? There are no hiding places... unless you expect us to believe she crawled up inside the fireplace chimney.”

“Not there, no. Nor are there any secret closets or passages or any other such hocus-pocus. She was hidden—”

“—in the same place as her spirit props,” Sabina interrupted, “within the sideboard.” Her testy glance at Quincannon said he’d hogged center stage long enough; she wasn’t above a bit of a flare for the dramatic herself, he thought fondly. “The interior is hollow, and she is both tiny and enough of a contortionist to fold her body into such a short, narrow space. The catch that releases the hinged top can be operated from within as well. Once the room was in total darkness and Vargas began invoking the spirits, she climbed out to commence her preparations. Under her robe, I’ll warrant, is an all-black, close-fitting garment. Black gloves and a mask of some sort to cover her white face completed the costume. And her familiarity with the room allowed her to move about in silence.”

“All well and good,” Buckley said, “but the woman was outside the locked door, pounding on it, less than a minute after Vargas was stabbed. Explain that.”

“Simple misdirection, Mr. Buckley. Before the stabbing she replaced all props in the sideboard and closed the top, then unlocked the door; the key made a faint scraping and the bolt clicked, sounds which John and I both heard. Then she crossed the room, plunged her dagger into Vargas, recrossed the room immediately after the second thrust, let herself out into the darkened hallway, and relocked the door from that side. Not with Vargas’s key, which remained on the sideboard, but with a duplicate key of her own.”

No one spoke for a cluster of seconds. In hushed tones, then, Grace Cobb asked, “Why did you do it, Annabelle?”

The psychic assistant’s mouth twisted. Her voice, when it came, was fiery with passion. “He was an evil unbeliever. He mocked the spirits with his schemes, laughed and derided them and those of us who truly believe. I did his bidding because I loved him, I obeyed him until the spirits came in the night and told me I must obey no longer. They said I must destroy him. Angkar guided my hand tonight. Angkar showed me the path to the truth and light of the Afterworld...”

Her words trailed off; she sat staring fixedly. Looking at no one there with her blazing eyes, Quincannon thought, but at whatever she believed waited for her beyond the pale.

It was after midnight before the bumbling constabulary (Quincannon considered all city policemen to be bumbling) finished with their questions, took Annabelle away, and permitted the others to depart. On the mist-wet walk in front, while they waited for hansoms, Cyrus Buckley drew Quincannon aside.

“You and Mrs. Carpenter are competent detectives, sir, I’ll grant you that even though I don’t wholly approve of your methods. You’ll have my check for the balance of our arrangement tomorrow morning.”

Quincannon bowed and accepted the financier’s hand. “If you should find yourself in need of our services again...”

“I trust I won’t.” Buckley paused to unwrap a long-nine seegar. “One question before we part. As I told you in your offices, the first seance Mrs. Buckley and I attended here was concluded by Vargas’s claim that Angkar had untied him. We heard the rope flung through the air, and when the gas was turned up we saw it lying unknotted on the floor. He couldn’t have untied all those knots himself, with only one free hand.”

“Hardly. Annabelle assisted in that trick, too.”

“I don’t quite see how it was worked. Can you make a guess?”

“I can. The unknotted rope, which he himself hurled across the room, was not the same one with which he was tied. Annabelle slipped up behind him and cut the knotted rope into pieces with her dagger, then hid the pieces in the sideboard. The second rope was concealed there with the props and given to Vargas after she’d severed the first.”

“His planned finale for tonight’s seance too, I fancy.”

“No doubt. Instead, Annabelle improvised a far more shocking finish.”

“Made him pay dearly for mocking the spirits, eh?”

“If you like, Mr. Buckley. If you like.”

Quincannon had time to smoke a bowlful of shag tobacco before a hansom arrived for him and Sabina. Settled in the darkened coach on the way to Russian Hill, he said, “All’s well that ends well. But I must say I’m glad this case is closed. Psychic phenomena, theocratic unity... bah. The lot of it is—”

“—horsefeathers,” Sabina said. “Yes, I know. But are you quite sure there’s no truth in it?”

“Spiritualism? None whatsoever.”

“Not spiritualism. The existence of a spirit afterlife.”

“Don’t tell me you give a whit of credence to such folly?”

“I have an open mind.”

“So do I, my dear, on most matters.”

“But not the paranormal.”

“Not a bit of it.”

For a time they sat in companionable stillness broken only by the jangle of the horses’ bit chains, the clatter of the iron wheels on rough cobblestones. Then there was a faint stirring in the heavy darkness, and to Quincannon’s utter amazement, a pair of soft, sweet lips brushed his, clung passionately for an instant, then withdrew.

He sat stunned for several beats. At which point his lusty natural instincts took over; he twisted on the seat, reached out to Sabina with eager hands and mouth. Both found yielding flesh. He kissed her soundly.

In the next second he found himself embracing a struggling, squirming spitfire. She pulled free, and the crack of her hand on his cheek was twice as hard as the slap in Vargas’s spirit room. “What makes you think you can take such liberties, John Quincannon!” she demanded indignantly.

“But... I was only returning your affection...”

“My affection?”

“You kissed me first. Why, if you didn’t care to have it reciprocated?”

“What are you gabbling about? I didn’t kiss you.”

“Of course you did. A few moments ago.”

“Faugh! I did no such thing and you know it.” Her dress rustled as she slid farther away from him. “Now I’ll thank you to keep your distance and behave yourself.”

He sat and behaved, not happily. Had he imagined the kiss? No, he wasn’t that moonstruck. She had kissed him, for a fact; he could still feel her lips against his. Some sort of woman’s game to devil him. He imagined her smiling secretly in the dark — but then the hack passed close to a streetlamp and he saw that she was leaning against the far door with her arms folded, unsmiling and wearing an injured look.

The only other explanation for the kiss... but that was sheer lunacy, not worth a moment’s consideration. It must have been Sabina. Of course it was Sabina. And yet...

The hansom clattered on into the cold, damp night.