The Unseen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It was two more days before Laurel could contrive to catch Morgan alone. It had to be alone; her uncle was clearly not willing to talk in front of Aunt Margaret. She headed over to her aunt’s house on Steeple Street on a crisp fall day, the temperature suddenly cooler, and the air laced with a light wind that rustled the still-green leaves.

Laurel stood between the white columns of the porch and rang and knocked. She waited for a good ten minutes, knocking several more times, and was just turning to give up when the door opened behind her with a soft creak. She looked back to see Morgan peering out from a crack in the door. Seeing her, he pulled the door open a few inches more, his face both bright and uneasy.

“Hello, Uncle Morgan.” He shuffled shyly behind the door, without speaking. She stepped forward. “Can I come in?”

“Margaret isn’t here,” he offered. Laurel knew that, of course—she’d been careful to check her aunt’s schedule at the hospital and had chosen a day when she was sure Margaret would be tied up in consultations.

“I came to see you.”

He looked pleased, and then alarmed. “Oh, no no no. Probably not. Most probably not.” His eyes were hazy and she thought possibly he had been drinking. He started to close the door, but she reached out and held it, gently but firmly.

“But I did. Won’t you let me in?”

He stood in the door for a long moment, then backed up into the hall. Laurel stepped inside cautiously, careful not to make any sudden moves. She eased the door shut behind her.

“Can we sit down?” she asked.

Morgan looked around him vaguely, shifting from foot to foot. “How about in the study?” Laurel suggested, as the stiff-backed chairs and low divans in the parlor hadn’t seemed in any way conducive to conversation.

Morgan turned on his heel abruptly and scurried down the hall. Laurel followed him down the windowless corridor to the walnut-paneled room. The light was clear through a triple window, but the built-in bookshelves and dark wood of the ceiling and walls kept the room dim. As Laurel had suspected, Morgan relaxed considerably in the encompassing quiet of the room; she’d noticed long ago that bookstores and libraries were both alluring and calming for people with troubled minds.

Morgan remained standing until she remembered to sit down herself (she was still getting used to these ingrained Southern manners), then he settled happily into what was obviously a favorite soft leather armchair.

Laurel noticed a leather-bound book with an embroidered marker on the marble-topped end table beside the chair, and a pair of half-spectacles beside it. There was a faint, sweet smell of Scotch.

“What are you reading?” she asked.

He shyly held up the volume: Edgar Rice Burroughs’s classic science-fiction fantasy A Princess of Mars. Laurel felt a pang. It couldn’t have been easy for this gentle, dreamy man to grow up in a house with two Amazonian sisters. No wonder he’d retreated into a fantasy life… maybe retreated so far he hadn’t come out.

She forced herself back to the matter at hand. She smiled at him and spoke in her gentlest voice.

“Uncle Morgan, I need your help with a paper I’m doing. When we were talking about the Rhine Laboratory, you said that you were tested. What do you mean?”

Already the words, “Rhine Laboratory,” had made him flinch and blink rapidly, nervously. He started to shake his head and Laurel said quickly, “Aunt Margaret isn’t here. And I won’t tell. I just want to hear about it.”

Morgan glanced behind him toward the kitchen as if to verify they were alone in the house. After a moment he leaned toward Laurel stealthily. “I was good at cards.”

She felt a thrill. “The Zener cards, you mean?” She reached into her purse for the pack of the cards she’d printed out that morning. She’d found templates easily available on many Web sites on line, formatted for printing.

But before she could draw out the pack, Morgan was shaking his head. “Cards. I was good at cards. Always won. Fellows said I should go get tested.”

“What fellows, Uncle Morgan?”

He extended a shaky hand, displaying the heavy gold ring on it like a proud new bride-to-be. Laurel saw the Greek letters—KA—and realized it was a fraternity ring.

“Your fraternity brothers?”

He smiled with a touch of smugness. “I beat them. I beat them all.”

“So they said you should go to the Rhine Lab… when was that?”

Her uncle looked vague, and then worried. He twisted the ring on his finger, without responding.

“What did you do in the lab?”

Her uncle brightened. “I won. A-plus.”

Now Laurel did take out the pack of Zener cards and showed them to him. “You won at these cards, you mean?”

He beamed, nodding. “A-plus. One hundred percent.”

Laurel felt a thrill of unreality. “You got every card right?” Except for very short trials with one exceptional subject, only two of the cases she’d read about so far had come even close to perfect results, even when the scores were far above chance.

“A-plus,” he repeated. “And the dice.”

She knew he must be referring to the dice-throwing machines, which could test either ESP through prediction of the toss, or PK, psychokinesis, in a test in which students attempted to influence the fall of the dice with their minds.

“Did you guess the dice?” she asked.

He shook his head adamantly. “You think hard and you make them fall.”

Not just ESP but PK? Laurel glanced toward the kitchen and flashed again on the dancing forks and spoons from her dream.

“Can you show me?”

The look of alarm on his face was immediate and overwhelming. “Oh, no no no. No no.” He stood from the chair, shifting back and forth on his feet as if about to break into a run. “No more. Margaret says no.”

He shot a frantic glance toward the hallway door, then the study window, then the door out onto the screened porch. He was making soft worried sounds like the crooning of a pigeon.

“It’s okay, Uncle Morgan—it’s okay. I’m sorry.” Laurel hastily gathered the cards and put them back in her purse. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Maybe we can just play, then?”

He lit up and scurried to an end table that she just then realized had an elegant poker caddy on it, with stacked chips and packs of cards.

It had been a long time since Laurel had played two-handed bridge, but her mother was an avid solitaire player and had taught her Hearts and bridge and gin rummy (Laurel always suspected it was so they wouldn’t actually have to talk). Laurel was able to keep up with Morgan’s hands, although it was clear he was a professional-level player and was beating the tar out of her. But winning was of no importance to Laurel: her uncle had completely relaxed into the game, his concentration completely on the cards, the worried wariness gone.

“I’ve been reading more about the lab, Uncle Morgan,” she said casually.

Morgan didn’t lift his eyes from the cards. “Your trick,” he said, and for a moment, she had the distinct feeling he was being literal, instead of referring to the game.

“I’m very curious,” she continued after a minute, more carefully. “And I wondered if you knew. I just don’t understand why the lab was closed so suddenly.”

“Your draw,” he said, looking down at the cards. He would not look at her, and she suppressed a sigh. It was clear he didn’t want to talk about it, and she didn’t have the heart to press him.

Dutifully she reached for a card—and Morgan abruptly stopped her hand with his. “No,” he said, and she looked at him, startled. “You’re not paying attention.”

His gaze locked hers… in the moment his rheumy eyes were startlingly clear. He looked down at the cards, passing his hand gently over them—and then reached for a different card than the one she had been about to draw.

He turned it over and she saw the Jack of Diamonds—the precise card she needed to complete the hand. She drew in a breath, and looked up at him.

“You need to pay attention.” He reached his index finger and touched the center of her forehead.

Her heart was beating faster and she felt tingling behind her ears.

Morgan didn’t look at her as he collected the cards and shuffled them, shuffled them again. Then he started dealing cards face down in two piles. The majority of cards he dealt into one stack, but every few cards he put one card aside in a smaller stack. Laurel watched, mesmerized by the soft slapping of the cards. When he had gone through the entire deck, he took the smaller pile and laid them out in a row, face down, in an order known only to him. He looked down at the row of cards, changed the place of one, then started at the head of the row and turned over one card after another, to reveal a complete set of hearts, in a perfect Ace-to-King order.

Laurel stared at the cards in complete awe.

“Uncle Morgan,” she said, and her voice was barely a whisper. “Why did the lab shut down?”

“It was the house,” he said softly.

“What house?” she asked, not daring to breathe. “The Seaford House?” He shook his head slowly. “The Folger House.” He met her eyes with a clear gaze, but before she could speak, his eyes clouded again with confusion, and yes, a hint of fear.

He collected the cards silently and began to lay them out, and would not speak again, no matter what she did to engage him.