Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 98, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 588 & 589, October 1991

The Spy and the Psychics by Edward D. Hoch

Holly shook her head. “He’ll die there at the Center,” she said. “I saw it.”

That decided Leila. She’d put her passport in her purse as she was leaving for Heathrow, and even now that act seemed to be some sort of psychic event. “I’m going with you to Paris.”

“You can’t!” Hastings insisted. “You could endanger yourself as well as Jeffery.”

“Couldn’t you take me with you!” Leila asked Holly.

“Well, actually I could. The invitation suggested we bring someone along to act as a control during the experiment.”

That was all Leila needed. Hastings was still looking worried as she purchased her ticket and walked to the gate with Holly Russell...

“My name is Holly Russell. I don’t know if you remember me.”

Hastings, who’d been living in retirement on the coast of Scotland for the better part of a year, stood in his doorway staring at the attractive blonde girl who’d rung his bell. She did seem familiar.

“Are you a friend of my niece in Edinburgh?” he asked.

“No. When you were still working, you used me once as part of a study of the effectiveness of psychic espionage.”

“Of course!” Hastings responded, remembering now all too well. “Come in, Miss Russell.” He ushered her into the living room of his cottage. “I’m not in the habit of entertaining people here. You’ll have to forgive the dust. My niece usually comes out from Edinburgh once a week to clean for me, but her child has been ill.”

“Think nothing of it.” She settled down on the couch, an open, friendly young woman he remembered liking during those strange days a decade earlier. She had been in her late teens then, just out of school, and Hastings had chosen her among a dozen people of all ages who had shown evidence of psychic powers. They were brought to London for week-long experiments, in conjunction with the American CIA, to determine if it might be possible for Russian psychics to guess the true positions of MX missiles then being secretly shifted among a series of silos in the American Midwest.

Hastings, a skeptic from the very beginning, had groaned at the amount of time and talent being expended on the project. When the final report was written off as inconclusive, he felt a certain amount of vindication. And now one of these people had brought it all back by appearing on his doorstep this sunny April morning. He wondered what it meant.

“Do you live around here?” he asked Holly.

“I’m still in York. That’s not too far.”

“Far enough. What brings you here?”

“I had to see you. Remember Mr. Rand who used to work for you?”

“Of course.”

“You must warn him. He’s in terrible danger.”

“Rand’s been retired for fifteen years. I haven’t seen him in months.”

“I have to reach him somehow.”

Hastings pursed his lips, studying her. “He lives down in Reading. But—”

“Do you have his phone number?”

“Yes.” He started for the desk where he kept his bills and correspondence. “Tell me something. How did you find me?”

“I saw you here,” she replied, waving her hand to dismiss it as unimportant. “By the sea.”

“You mean in your mind?”

“Yes.”

“You still claim to have psychic experiences.”

She bristled. “I never claim it. I don’t think it’s something to brag about. It’s more of a sickness.”

“Tell me about Rand.”

“I’ve been invited to attend a seminar next week at the European Center for Scientific Anomalies in Paris. They’ll be doing ESP experiments. I must have been thinking about it and I had a sort of vision of Mr. Rand. I barely remembered him because we only met that one time at your office, but I’m sure it was he. He was in Paris, at the same seminar, and I saw him lying on a table with a sheet over his body — all but the head. There was a whole row of bodies, and they had no eyes. They were dead. There was blood on the floor.”

When the telephone rang, Leila Rand was busy making notes for the following day’s lecture from a thick archeology textbook she used in the course she taught at Reading University. She picked up the phone, thinking it might be her husband calling from Europe, and was surprised to hear Hastings’ familiar voice.

“Leila, is Jeffery there?”

“No, he’s in Europe. He was doing something for Parkinson a few months back and got involved with the Gypsy refugee problem there. He went back to help with the resettlement of Romanian Gypsies.”

“I may need to reach him.”

“Where are you? In London?”

“I’m still up in Scotland, but there’s a young woman here who has a warning to communicate. I feel a bit foolish, Leila. It may be nothing, but I felt Rand should be told about it.”

“What sort of warning?” she asked, feeling a chill.

“The woman’s a psychic of sorts. I used her in some experiments when I was still working in London. I don’t know that I should say any more on the telephone.”

“A psychic? For God’s sake, Hastings—”

“I know, I know. But perhaps you should speak with her. We could take an afternoon flight down to London. She’s on her way to Paris.”

“If you think it’s that important—”

“It might be, Leila.”

“I could meet you at Heathrow. It’s just off the M4, a half hour’s drive for me.”

“That would help a great deal.”

When they’d worked out the time, Leila hung up and sat staring at the window. Poor old Hastings, forced into retirement by the powers at British Intelligence, longed to get back into action. He might be reading more into this than there actually was. But the mention of the psychic had caught her interest. Rand had phoned the previous evening from Vienna to tell her he was journeying to Paris with an old Gypsy woman who claimed to predict the future. He was delivering her to the European Center for Scientific Anomalies and then he would be coming home.

Leila had heard about two psychics within twenty-four hours, and somehow that seemed like one too many.

Her first thought upon seeing Hastings emerge from the arrival gate was that he looked remarkably fit — much better than the last time she’d seen him. Perhaps he was adjusting to retirement, after all. “Leila, my dear!” he greeted her, seeming relieved to see her there. “This is Holly Russell.”

The blonde young woman accompanying Hastings seemed to be in her late twenties. Leila detected a North of England accent when she spoke. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Rand.”

“Let’s go somewhere and talk,” Leila suggested. There was a coffee shop at one end of the lounge and they found a table there. “Now what’s all this about?” she asked when their orders had been taken.

“Your husband is in great danger,” Holly told her, and went on to recount her vision of the row of eyeless bodies.

“Where does this take place?”

“In Paris, at the European Center for Scientific Anomalies. I’ll be there myself this evening. I only stopped off here to see you.”

Hastings must have seen the look of shock that passed over Leila’s face. “What is it?” he asked.

“I spoke with Jeffery last night. He’s going there today.”

“What on earth for?”

“He’s escorting an elderly Gypsy woman, then he’s coming on home.”

Holly shook her head. “He’ll die there at the Center — I saw it.”

That decided Leila. She’d put her passport in her purse as she was leaving for Heathrow, and now even that act seemed to be some sort of psychic event. “I’m going with you to Paris.”

“You can’t!” Hastings insisted. “You could endanger yourself as well as Jeffery.”

“Couldn’t you take me with you?” Leila asked Holly.

“Well, actually I could. The invitation suggested we bring someone along to act as a control during the experiment.”

That was all Leila needed. Hastings was still looking worried as she purchased her ticket and walked to the gate with Holly Russell.

The European Center for Scientific Anomalies was located in a turn-of-the-century building with an Art Nouveau facade of twining vines and ornamental serpents. Rand gazed up at it as he helped old Hortensia Fernando from the taxi that had brought them from Orly Airport.

“Are we here?” she asked tentatively, leaning heavily on his arm. A stroke she’d suffered the previous summer had affected her right side, leaving her with a pronounced limp and a hand she couldn’t use.

“This is it. I’ll take you inside and get you settled.”

Hortensia, who admitted to being eighty-five years old, was a stout woman who did the best she could with her affliction. She’d worn her most colorful Gypsy garb for the flight from Vienna, and Rand had felt every eye on them as they rode down the airport corridor in an electrically powered vehicle provided for infirm passengers.

It was different here at the Center. Its director, Dr. Marcel Dument, hurried down the staircase to greet them, and he took Hortensia over with a matter-of-fact manner that showed no surprise at her appearance. “Thank you for bringing Hortensia, Mr. Rand. It’s been a great help to us.”

“I wish I could remain to escort her back to Vienna, but I’m returning to England.”

“Today?”

“Yes.”

“We’re planning some experiments in extrasensory perception and I’d like to use a control group. You’d be perfect for it if you could possibly manage to stay until tomorrow.”

“I’d have to phone my wife. She’s expecting me tonight.” Leila had long ago learned to cope with his unexpected absences, but he didn’t want his decision to be too hasty.

“Please stay,” Hortensia pleaded. “I’d feel so much better if you were here.”

Rand had known the Gypsy woman less than a week, but she’d come to rely on him completely. “Well,” he decided, “I suppose I could get an early flight back to London tomorrow.”

“Ah, thank you!” she responded, showing gaps where teeth were missing as she smiled.

Marcel Dument took them upstairs and showed them the cell-like rooms they’d be occupying during their stay. “I’m sorry they aren’t larger, but we sometimes have twenty-five or thirty people staying here at one time. This group is smaller, but still sizable.”

“How many?”

“Six subjects and six controls, if we can get that many. I have two assistants who work with me, so that makes fifteen in all.”

“Is your work funded by the government?” Rand asked.

“In part,” Dument explained. “We’re loosely affiliated with the Center for Scientific Anomalies Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, though their experimental methods differ somewhat from ours.”

They helped Hortensia to get settled in her room and resumed their conversation as Dument led the way down the hall. “How did you happen to choose this Gypsy woman for your experiment?” Rand asked.

“Gypsy women have traditionally earned money as fortune tellers. When I heard that a large Gypsy resettlement project was under way in Vienna, I contacted them and requested someone they considered a legitimate psychic. Most of them are fakes, of course, we know that, but I felt the Gypsy tribes themselves would know if they had a true psychic in their ranks. The name of Hortensia Fernando was suggested immediately. Of course, her age made travel difficult, but happily for us you were on the scene, Mr. Rand.”

“I’ve been working with them a bit in recent months. It’s ironic that many of these nomadic people now want to settle down and are unable to find a place that will accept them. When Romania was a Socialist state, they allowed the Gypsies to remain by the simple expedient of denying their existence. The new government recognized them and has forced many of them back on the road. The story is the same in other countries of Eastern Europe. I met a Gypsy king — the head of a tribe — in Vienna, and he told me a great deal about their plight.”

Dument showed Rand his room. It was almost identical to the one Hortensia occupied, with a single narrow window looking out on a rear courtyard. “If everyone else arrives on time, we’d like to conduct the first experiment late this afternoon, before dinner,” the Frenchman said.

“That soon?”

Dument smiled slightly. “With some subjects, especially older ones, a full stomach has been known to bring on sleep rather than visions.”

Rand nodded. “I’ll be ready when you want me.”

He spent some time unpacking his small overnight bag and locating the communal bathroom at the end of the long hall. Then, promptly at 5:00 P.M. he was summoned by one of Dument’s assistants, an attractive young woman named Victoria Tempest who told him she’d grown up in Reading.

“That’s where my wife and I live,” he told her.

“Small world. I haven’t seen Reading in a good many years, though.”

“Dr. Dument mentioned another assistant. Is he British, too?”

She shook her head. “A young Chinese gentleman. He doesn’t speak much English and I have trouble understanding his French, but we manage.”

“Are the other subjects all here?”

“Two of them dropped out, but the doctor thinks we can do with ten — five psychics and five controls.”

They entered a large living room where the others sat about on sofas and chairs. He was aware of a variety of ages and nationalities, including German and Spanish. Hortensia had arrived on the arm of Dument’s Chinese assistant and Rand made his way to her at once. She looked pale and unsteady as the young man guided her to an armchair.

“Are you all right?” Rand asked.

The old woman turned her eyes toward him. “There is someone here that I recognize. I must speak with you after dinner.”

Rand nodded and sat down in the only empty chair as Marcel Dument entered the room and conferred quietly with his assistants. They seemed like ordinary people to Rand and only one of them — a vigorous-looking man with a white moustache — could have been over sixty. The others were young or middle-aged. The blonde woman in the corner must have been still in her twenties.

That was when his eyes fell on her companion, seated almost deliberately in the only shadowed area of the large room. It was his wife, Leila.

Dr. Marcel Dument cleared his throat and began to speak. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Paris. I believe you all know something about the European Center for Scientific Anomalies and the work we do here. It has been called a psychic-research center, but I believe we have a wider vision than that. This week, however, we are conducting experiments in psychic research. I would like to begin with a basic sort of experiment, a modification of the ganzfeld procedure developed at the Maimonides Medical Center in New York.”

There was a slight stir in the room and Rand glanced at the others, his eyes seeking Leila’s. She caught his gaze for just an instant, but her expression didn’t change. Whatever she was doing here, she didn’t want him to acknowledge her presence just yet.

“The five of you,” Dument continued, indicating the psychics, “will be placed in separate cubicles in a soundproofed, electromagnetically shielded room upstairs. You will be in a comfortable reclining position, as will the five controls in their own separate cubicles. Halved Ping-Pong balls will be placed over your eyes, and diffused light will be projected onto them while unstructured sound is played in your ears. There will be no sensory distractions whatsoever to your receptivity.”

The man with the white moustache raised his hand and Dument recognized him. “A question, Mr. Parkman?”

“What will we be attempting to receive?”

The Frenchman smiled and gestured toward his Chinese assistant. “This is Lin Wan.” The young man bowed. “He will be our sender this evening. I will select three photographic slides at random, which Miss Tempest will carry to another room. Lin Wan will choose one of the slides without looking at them and project it onto the wall. That is the image he will attempt to convey to you. Each of you, psychics and controls alike, will have a pad and pencil by your hand. The shapes and impressions you record will be compared with the images sent by Lin Wan.”

There were a few other technical questions about the mechanics of the experiment, and then the meeting broke up. “We’ll meet in Room Fifteen upstairs,” Victoria Tempest announced. “Ten minutes!”

Rand started edging toward Leila, but Parkman tugged at his sleeve. “You one of the psychics?”

“No, I’m a control.”

“I’m psychic.” Parkman’s white moustache seemed to bobble as he talked. “I saw a plane crash once two days before it happened. They called me in when that plane was blown up over Scotland, but I couldn’t help them. It comes and goes. I don’t know how I’ll do today.”

“I’ve heard that’s often the case.” Rand moved away from him. “See you upstairs.”

Leila and the blonde woman were just leaving the room when he reached them. He spoke to Leila’s companion first. “Don’t I know you?”

It was only a gambit in case they were overheard, but she surprised him by responding, “Yes, you do! I’m surprised you remembered.”

“Jeffery—” Leila whispered.

He kept facing the young woman. “But where did we meet?”

“Your life may be in danger,” the whisper continued.

“I’m Holly Russell. We met at Mr. Hastings’ office once when he was testing my psychic abilities. I was only a teenager then.”

Rand had a vague memory of the incident, but he was more interested in Leila’s whispered message: “She had a vision of you in a room with dead people. No eyes, blood on the floor. She knew you’d be here, so I came along to warn you!”

“Everybody upstairs,” Victoria announced. “We’re ready to begin.”

“Be careful!” Leila persisted as she followed him up the stairs.

The room was a long one that may have served as a dormitory at one time. Partitions divided it into twelve cubicles, six on each side. There was a cot in each cubicle with a low table next to it. As Rand was helping Hortensia get settled in her cubicle, she told him, “I don’t like this. There is an evil person here.”

“Who?”

But she had no opportunity to say more. Dr. Dument entered with Victoria and requested that everyone lie down. “I’ll be going to the next room to choose three slides at random,” he said. “Good luck and good visions to you all.”

“Horse feathers!” Mr. Parkman barked in response. “I’m too old to be lying on this thing! How long will it last?”

“Only a half hour,” Victoria answered soothingly. She placed the halved Ping-Pong balls over his eyes and adjusted the earphones to bring him a soothing rush of unstructured sound — then visited each of the others in turn. She placed a pencil in Rand’s hand and told him, “The pad is right under your hand. Draw whatever image you see.” She draped a sheet over him.

“I’m not much of an artist nor a psychic.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’ve seen experiments where the controls produced better results than the subjects did.”

She left Rand alone, his vision and his hearing both blocked off. He was acutely aware of Leila’s warning that his life could be in danger — the young woman with her had seen it in a vision. He tried to relax and empty his mind.

After the first five minutes on her cot, Leila removed the domed coverings from her eyes. A strange red light was playing about the room, creating the odd effects of diffused light she’d been seeing. She lifted her head a bit to look for Rand, but she could only see into the cubicle directly across from her where Mr. Parkman seemed to be drawing something with the pencil.

Cautiously, she removed the headphones and slipped off the cot. The men and women were covered with sheets, as in Holly’s vision, and the eye coverings gave the impression that they were sightless. She knew Jeffery was in danger and she had to reach him before the blood on the floor became a reality, too.

Mr. Parkman was still drawing, as were a couple of the others. She moved down the line past Holly Russell and saw Jeffery opposite the old Gypsy woman he’d escorted there. She stepped closer to see if he was all right and suddenly his hand flew up to grab hers. “Jeffery — it’s me!” she gasped.

He pulled the coverings from his eyes. “You warned me to be on my guard. It’s a wonder I didn’t break your wrist.” He sat up on the cot, keeping his voice low. “What’s going on?”

“People drawing pictures. No blood on the floor yet.”

“Perhaps you should return to your cot. Our brain waves might be ruining the experiment.”

She turned away and started back, then gave a low gasp. “Jeffery! The Gypsy woman! There’s blood—”

He was off the cot in an instant, following her to the cubicle on the opposite side, next to the one occupied by Mr. Parkman. The pencil was lying loosely in Hortensia’s limp right hand, over the pad on which she’d drawn a few vertical lines. There were drops of blood on the floor from a wound in her neck.

“She’s dead,” Rand said. “We’d better call off the experiment.”

Marcel Dument was the first one into the room. The other subjects, disturbed by the sound of voices, had removed their eye coverings and earphones and were getting off the cots. Dument looked around in panic, and Rand feared for a moment he might actually burst into tears. “What’s all this noise?” he demanded. “You’ve ruined the entire experiment! Lin Wan is unable to transmit!”

“Hortensia Fernando has a worse problem,” Rand told him. “She’s been murdered.”

“Here? Impossible!”

“Look for yourself. She was stabbed in the neck with a thin-bladed weapon, possibly a letter-opener. The wound caused very little external bleeding, but it was enough to kill her within minutes. The killer may have held a hand over her mouth to prevent any sound.”

“You seem to know a great deal about it,” Dr. Dument said with a frown.

Victoria and Lin Wan were in the room now, too, demanding to know what was happening. The remaining subjects were in various states of hysteria, including Holly Russell. “It’s like my vision!” she almost screamed. “The dead body, the people without eyes, the blood on the floor! Oh, God, I saw it all!”

“Only you had the wrong victim,” Leila reminded her.

“You’d better summon the police,” Rand told Victoria Tempest. “Then we’ll see what we’ve got here.”

“Police?” Mr. Parkman protested. “I have a reputation to protect.”

“No one is accusing you of a thing,” Dument assured him. “Let’s go someplace where we can talk.” He turned to Victoria. “Bring along all the subjects — both psychics and controls. We’ll go downstairs to the sitting room.”

Rand had an idea. “I think it might be a good idea if I collect all the pads and label them. When you have a murder committed among psychics, someone might have caught onto an odd brainwave.”

Leila stayed with him as he collected the pads, helping him write the name of each person on the back. “Some of these are pretty wild,” she observed. “Others are blank.”

“Like mine.”

“Mine, too. I was busy watching over you.”

“Yet you saw no one else off their cot?”

“No. But I played the game for the first five minutes — that would have been long enough for the killer. Did Hortensia receive anything?”

He glanced at the vertical lines on the pad. “She’d only just begun, but she seemed to be receiving something. Poor woman. Not a good way to die.”

“You seemed to know a great deal about her throat wound.”

“It was one of several silent killing methods taught by the KGB before the Soviets changed their ways.”

They headed downstairs to join the others. “You think there’s a rogue agent among the subjects?” Leila said.

“I don’t know. Hortensia told me she recognized someone here, but she didn’t say who.”

Dument was holding forth in the living room as he had earlier. “The police will be here shortly,” he told the nine remaining subjects. “It seems certain that Hortensia Fernando was murdered by one of you in the room with her.”

“I object to that conclusion,” Parkman sputtered. “What about you and your two assistants?”

“I can assure you I had nothing to do with it. Why would I ruin my own experiment? As for Victoria, after I randomly chose the three slides, she took them into Lin Wan’s room. She remained with him while he projected one on the wall and concentrated on it. And in the event you think the two of them were in it together, I need only point out to you that three of the ten subjects did indeed intercept his thought waves with some degree of success.”

“Which three?” Rand asked. He hadn’t paid that much attention when he had picked up the pads and labeled them.

“Here’s the slide Lin Wan chose. It’s a forest view showing a number of tall trees. Holly Russell was the closest. She received a positive vision of a tree. Mr. Parkman appears to have drawn several mushrooms, but in outline they bear some resemblance to trees. The victim, Hortensia, drew three vertical lines before she was killed. These could have been the beginnings of trees. You’ll note that none of the others is even close, and two pads — those of Mr. Rand and Miss Gaad — are blank.”

Rand smiled slightly to hear Leila’s maiden name. She hadn’t used it in years. Before he could say anything else, they were interrupted by the arrival of the police.

Between the police questioning and the tension that had rapidly built among them all, hardly anyone in Marcel Dument’s big house had thought much about eating dinner. It was after nine before the official investigators departed, having arranged for further questioning in the morning. The body of Hortensia Fernando was removed and Rand stood at the foot of the stairs as she was carried down on a covered stretcher. It was a tragedy to end up like this after a lifetime of wandering. A senseless death — senseless, at least, to everyone but her killer.

Later, grouped once more around the tables in the living room trying to eat from the selection of food Lin Wan and Victoria had provided from the kitchen, signs of their impatience began to appear. “I’m not staying in this house overnight with a killer,” Park-man decided. “I’d be safer sleeping under one of the bridges on the Left Bank!”

“The police say we all must remain until morning,” Dument reminded him. “If you leave, they’ll think you have something to hide. They’ll come after you.”

A dowdy woman Rand didn’t know joined in, trying to dissuade him. The argument continued until Parkman weakened and agreed to stay the night. “But I’ll be gone tomorrow,” he assured them, “just as soon as I talk with the police.”

While the others argued and went over the afternoon’s events once more, Rand studied the three drawings that had been on Parkman’s, Holly’s, and the dead woman’s pads. “What do you think?” Leila asked, coming over to sit by him.

“Holly’s is the closest to the scene Lin Wan was concentrating on. I don’t really believe in ESP or any of these things, but there are times when even a skeptic has to bend a bit. Tell me exactly how you happened to be here with her.”

Leila ran over the story again, starting with the phone call from Hastings and his arrival with Holly at Heathrow. “It might be,” Rand mused, talking to himself.

“What might be?”

“I have an idea that might work, but first I want to call Hastings. I’d better do that right now.”

He left Leila with the others and asked Victoria Tempest if he could use the Center’s phone to call Scotland. “I suppose it would be all right,” she agreed, leading him out to the office.

Once he was alone, he placed the call to Hastings’ retirement cottage on the Scottish shore. He hoped Hastings wouldn’t be in bed yet, though certainly the man had wakened Rand many times when he was his superior in British Intelligence.

“Rand!” Hastings greeted him. “Where are you? Is everything all right?”

“I’m still in Paris. Leila is here, as you know, with that young woman psychic. We’re all fine for the moment, but there’s been a killing. The old Gypsy woman, Hortensia Fernando. She told me earlier that she recognized someone at this Center. That person may have killed her.”

“Is there any way I can help?”

“Leila tells me Holly Russell remembers me from a time about ten years ago when you ran a test trying to determine whether psychics could pick out the underground silos where American ICBM missiles were hidden.”

“That’s right. The results were inconclusive. Some subjects scored well, but not much better than chance would have it. Others did poorly. We worked with the CIA on it.”

“Holly did well?”

“I believe so, yes. How accurate was her vision about you?”

“I’m still alive but otherwise I’d rate her about seventy-five percent. She also did well during the experiment here, though it had to be terminated because of the killing. Look, Hastings, what I need from you are answers to a few questions.”

“Go ahead.”

“Were there any Gypsies in the group you tested a decade ago?”

“No, I’m sure I would have remembered that.” He hesitated a moment. “There was something about Gypsies, though, not long before my retirement. Let me see—”

Rand waited.

“No, it’s gone. If it comes to me and seems important I could let you know.”

“Think, Hastings! Did it have to do with Paris?”

“Not Paris. It was in East Berlin, just before the wall came down in ’89. Someone was trying to escape disguised as a Gypsy and a real Gypsy band betrayed the person. I can’t remember now whether it was a man or a woman, or the person’s nationality. It was just a story I heard — someone who’d been an agent of the East Germans and had to get out fast before their allegiance was revealed. You’ll remember that virtually all the files of the East German secret police fell into the hands of the West.”

In his younger days Hastings would never have forgotten the important details, but Rand didn’t press him further. He didn’t need to.

When he finished his conversation with Hastings and returned to the others, Leila looked up inquiringly, but when he spoke he addressed Dr. Dument. “If everyone isn’t too tired, I believe there’s a way that we can determine who killed Hortensia Fernando.”

“And what would that be, Mr. Rand?”

“These three drawings tell it all. Of the people you assembled for your experiment, it’s obvious that Holly Russell is the most adept at psychic powers. If she were to sit in the cubicle where the Gypsy woman died, I think she could conjure up a vision of the murder and identify the murderer for us.”

Everyone turned to look at the blonde girl, who blushed. “I don’t know if I could do that—”

“If she could see it now,” Parkman argued, “why couldn’t she see it when it was happening?”

“Because her mind was focused elsewhere — on the picture Lin Wan was trying to transmit. Remember that the killing must have taken place during the first five minutes of the experiment.”

Dument and Victoria exchanged glances. “I see no harm in it,” she decided, “as long as everyone’s present to see the results — provided there are any. Lin Wan?”

The Chinese assistant nodded. “It could be interesting. The police of various countries have had some success in the use of psychics for crime investigations and missing-persons searches.”

“What would you want me to do?” Holly asked.

“Simply sit in the cubicle, or lie on the cot, and concentrate your thoughts on Hortensia,” Dument told her.

“All right,” Parkman said, getting to his feet. “Let’s do it.” Somehow he’d become the unelected leader of the others and they all followed his move. The dowdy woman, the fat German, and the Spaniard all moved in his wake toward the stairs.

Rand let Leila walk along with Lin Wan while he and Holly Russell brought up the rear, during which time he had a few private words with her.

They finally decided that Holly should lie on the same cot that Hortensia had occupied when she was stabbed. “It would be perfect if she had the murder weapon,” Dument said, “but no weapon’s been found.” He bent over the young blonde woman and asked, “Would you like your eyes covered?”

“It might help me to concentrate.”

When she was in the cubicle alone, Rand, Leila, and the other subjects arranged themselves in a semicircle outside and Dument, Lin Wan, and Victoria grouped in one corner. “Please concentrate,” Dument said soothingly. “Let your mind go blank.”

Holly’s body seemed to tense and then relax. At that moment she was probably the only one in the room who was relaxed. Parkman started to mutter something, but Leila hushed him.

“Do you see it?” Marcel Dument asked softly.

There was silence for a full minute before she responded. “Yes, I see it.” Her voice had taken on a different quality.

“Tell us what you see.”

“I’m on a cot in this cubicle and someone has come in to be with me. My eyes are covered but I hear a voice, soothing me.”

“Then what happens?”

“I feel—” A gasp, a little cry. “My neck! A sharp pain! I can’t breathe! Someone’s covered my mouth to muffle the sound. I... I’m dying!”

“Did you recognize the voice of the person who stabbed you?”

“Yes.”

“Whose voice was it? Who stabbed you, Hortensia?”

Holly’s body seemed to convulse at the mention of the Gypsy woman’s name. “I... I—”

“Who?”

Rand stepped suddenly forward. “Don’t be afraid. Tell us who stabbed you.”

Dument tried to hush him, but already Holly was speaking. “It was Victoria Tempest. She killed me!”

Victoria’s hand came up holding the slim dagger, but she wasn’t fast enough. Leila grabbed her by the arm and toppled her to the floor.

The police came again, and once more Rand found himself in the living room with the others. They’d been so in awe of Holly Russell’s psychic abilities that she hated to tell them it had been part of a plan to smoke out the killer and get Victoria to reveal herself. “My abilities come and go,” she said. “I could never perform on command like that without a little help. Mr. Rand told me what to say.”

“But—” Dr. Dument was baffled along with the others “—Victoria and Lin Wan were the only two people here who couldn’t have committed the murder. They were together all the time. Are you saying he was part of it, too?”

“No, she was in it alone.”

“How could you know it was her? Perhaps you’re a better psychic than Miss Russell.”

“There was nothing psychic about it. Those drawings told the whole story, especially the three vertical lines drawn on Hortensia’s pad. You see, it was by her right hand, but she’d lost the use of that hand after a stroke last year. I knew from the beginning she hadn’t drawn the lines, they had to have been drawn by her killer. But why? Well, what did the lines establish?”

“The time of death,” Leila said.

“Exactly! The beginning of the drawing made it appear that Hortensia had to be still alive when Lin Wan looked at the slide and began the experiment. From that moment on, Victoria was with him and they alibied each other. But once I realized Hortensia’s pad had been by the wrong hand, Victoria had to be the killer. Hortensia would have corrected her on the pad placement if she was alive. Victoria killed her upon first entering the cubicle, smothering any cries, and then placed the pad by her right hand without giving it a second thought.”

But Dument had an objection. “If Victoria drew those three vertical lines, she was drawing the suggestion of the trees before that slide was even chosen.”

“Think about it,” Rand replied. “There were no trees, or even mushrooms such as Mr. Parkman drew. Only vertical lines. Almost any slide chosen, except for a horizon or seascape, would have some vertical lines in it. Even a group of people could be indicated by such lines. You chose three slides at random and handed them to Victoria. As she carried them into Lin Wan’s separate room, she glanced at them and picked the one that best suggested the lines — in this case, a forest. Then she forced it on Lin Wan in the same manner that magicians force someone to choose a card from a deck. Or perhaps she actually removed any inappropriate slides and replaced them with ones of her own. In any event, she made certain that Lin Wan was concentrating on a picture whose vertical lines somewhat matched those she’d drawn on her victim’s pad.”

“Why?” Holly asked. “Why did she kill her?”

“I don’t have the whole story clear, but I believe she worked for the East Germans before the Berlin wall came down. Hortensia saw her once when she tried to escape disguised as a Gypsy, and Victoria killed her to keep her past from being revealed. Hastings put me onto that when I phoned him. We’ll have to check the records.”

It was some time later when Leila asked him, “Holly Russell did see it. She saw that room and a murder. She warned Hastings and me, and we got to you with the information. How do you explain that?”

“I don’t try to,” Rand replied. “As Holly herself said, her abilities come and go. If governments could rely on true psychics, it would probably put all the spies out of business.”