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And so off they'd gone, Frances wearing another of the new
dresses we'd put on her husband's account-this one a thin, light
wool in a delicious shade of mauve, with a matching waist-length
jacket of slightly heavier material-and Patrick long and lean and
handsome in spite of his rather threadbare suit. I had a feeling,
watching them through the window as they proceeded up the sidewalk,
that Patrick would not be threadbare much longer. Perhaps today
they would discover a real treasure left by Emperor Norton. There
were those, both in the Emperor's lifetime and since, who thought
he had not lost his millions by squanderingthem on all that rice,
but rather that he had cannily hidden the money and then, in his
madness, had been unable to recall where it was.

Wouldn't it be something if I caught a murderer and Frances and
Patrick found a treasure, both on the same day?

I shook off that thought just as the two star-crossed lovers
turned the corner and went out of sight. Then I turned my own
attention toward Edna Stephenson and proceeded to give her detailed
instructions on how to introduce herself to Michael when he
arrived. She was intimidated; she said she couldn't possibly do
it.

"Nonsense!" I upbraided her. "Of course you can. He won't bite.
And besides, you have to. Wish and I are going to catch a killer,
and we aren't telling you where, because if we do, Michael will get
it out of you, and we don't want him to know. We want this to be a
great, wonderful surprise for him."

"Well, I like that!" said Edna huffily. "A body'd think she
wasn't appreciated around here. I'll have you to know I've done my
share, and kept things confidential, and proved I can be trusted.
Aloysius, I don't like you going anywhere your mama doesn't know
where you are. Fremont, I'm surprised at you."

"Mama, you don't understand. Fremont's right, she knows what's
best. We don't want Michael coming after us," Wish said, with a
firmness I'd seldom heard him use to his mother.

"We'll be perfectly safe. The killer has no idea we know
anything about him, he will be alone and probably unarmed, whereas
both Wish and I have our weapons with us. Not to mention that your
son is police-trained to handle just exactly this kind of
situation. Really, we'll be fine." I had my walking stick, and Wish
had his Colt revolver-I had made sure of that.

"That's right, Mama. Perfectly safe," Wish said like an echo. He
was being entirely agreeable. I had not yet told him any details,
he had no idea yet where we were going, but none of that seemed to
bother him in the least, as long as we went together.

"Michael won't eat you, he's not an ogre. Just tell him he'll
have to deal with me if he's not nice to you, and I said so," I
teased.

"Humph!" said Edna, with her little nose in the air, but her
eyes twinkled. She might protest, whine, and carry on, but she'd do
fine.

I gave her a hug while her son stood by fidgeting, and by ten
o'clock in the morning he and I were off on what I was sure would
be an extremely profitable errand.

I BRIEFED WISH along the way. It was a bright day, not clear but
with a high overcast of white cloud cover that gave a pearly sheen
to the cityscape; and nearly windless, on the warm side. We could
have walked down Van Ness and across to catch the cable car, but I
was in a hurry. I had no patience for peripatetics this morning. So
on Van Ness we hailed an auto-taxi, and I gave the driver the
Larkin Street address of Dr. William Van Zant. Wish stared at me
whenever he thought I wasn't looking; otherwise he pretended to
gaze out the car window. I couldn't understand his lack of
animation; he seemed most unlike himself, except for the way he
watched me. Really, this excessive attentiveness had gone too far.
I must not tease Wish anymore, or play with him, or encourage him
further. Doglike devotion is a bit much for me. If I wanted that, I
should get a dog. From my friends I want only simple
friendship.

When the taxi pulled up in front of those steps I remembered
well from my other visits, I reached deep into my leather bag, came
out with a couple of bills for the fare, and automatically steeled
myself to have the usual argument with Wish about a woman paying
her own business expenses.

This time, though, he did not argue. He simply exited the door
on his own side, went around and opened mine, and stood there
waiting for me to get out. He continued to stand there as I mounted
the first two steps, then turned and looked back at him. Wish was
so tall that standing two steps up brought me just slightly above
his height.

"What are you waiting for?" I asked, slightly exasperated. "This
is where I need your assistance, you know. Van Zant is much bigger
than I am, and if I'm right about what he's done-"

"I don't think you should go in there, Fremont!" The words burst
from Wish's lips explosively, and almost in the same instant he
clapped his hand over his mouth, as if horrified that he'd uttered
them. Well, of course he would be; he knew how I felt about anyone,
even Michael, giving me orders. Especially in the last stages of
solving a case.

"Nonsense," I replied, "come on in, if you please. And keep that
Colt of yours within easy reach at all times. You may need to draw
on Van Zant before this morning is out. In fact, I expect you
will."

Such foot-dragging I had never seen from Wish. He came up the
steps one at a time; and even then I had to open the front door
myself, for the both of us. I practically had to drag him by the
hand to the door of Van Zant's apartment.

The self-styled psychologist was a long time in answering his
door. I rang three times; then put my ear to the solid wood and
listened. I couldn't hear a sound from within, but that could have
been because the door was of good-quality, thick wood.

I glanced back over my shoulder at Wish. "Do you think we might
pick this lock? I suppose we could find some evidence inside. It's
possible. Of course it isn't exactly legal, but it would give us
something to do until the doctor returns."

Wish rubbed at his ear. He appeared distressed. "N-no. I, uh, I
think I know where he is. I-I-I'll take us there. We should have
kept the taxi. Now we'll have to find another, or else it will take
too long, and it's likely to be too late. . . ."

"Too late for what?" I asked, baffled, as Wish grabbed my hand
and hustled me out into the blue-draped vestibule, out the door,
down the steps.

"I'll take you to him. That will be best. The best thing. The
right thing to do," Wish said again. He walked fast, and as his
legs were long I had difficulty keeping up with him. We went up
Larkin to California Street, where there was more traffic, and a
couple of hotels that drew taxis to them like flies. We had no
difficulty finding another auto-taxi then.

Wish gave the address this time, and I recognized it. I suppose
I might not have, if it had not been that my mind was in that state
of heightened clarity that I have learned comes with a certain
amount of perceived danger. The address was a piece of unfinished,
and temporarily forgotten, business that related directly to Dr.
William Van Zant. It was indeed the very address the doctor himself
had given me for Ngaio Swann, Ingrid's supposed brother.

"How do you know that address?" I asked Wish.

"It's in the Richmond," he said.

"So? Do you know who lives there?"

"No, not really, at least I don't think so. But it's in the
Richmond, that's-well, that's how I, I guess I just . . . found
it."

"Honestly, Wish, you say that as if the house were just sitting
there, lost, out on the street, and you happened to stumble across
it. Really] You're not being at all clear, you know."

He shot me a quick, worried glance and then returned to looking
avidly out the taxi window. At least he'd regained some animation.
He said: "I've gotten to know the Richmond in the past few weeks.
Spent a lot of time there, seen and heard a lot of things. Things I
haven't been able to tell anybody yet. And now I-" Wish passed his
hand across his forehead, in a gesture that gave me a chill,
because it was so reminiscent of one I'd seen Patrick use on
Frances when he was putting her into her somnambulistic trance. "-I
want to tell you . . . but at the same time . . . I think I'd
better not. Not . . . yet."

"That must create a dilemma," I remarked acerbically.

"Yes, I guess it does," Wish said in his old agreeable way.

His dilemma seemed to have put him in charge, though; for
without hesitation he reached into the pocket of his trousers and
paid the driver when we reached our destination.

This area had been countryside until not too many years ago, and
its development was still uneven. We left the taxi in front of a
row of attached townhouses that looked fairly new, modern, and in
good condition though painted a boring beige; yet just a block or
so away there were houses that looked like little more than
tumbledown shacks.

I was unpleasantly reminded of the day we had come out here to
look for the graves that were not there. The very air felt the
same; there was the same sense of desolation and dislocation. I
wanted to ask how far we were from that cemetery, but the question
most likely would have set Wish off into the obsession that had
deranged his mind-or so I privately thought-in the first place.

"It happened here, too, you know," Wish volunteered, looking
down earnestly at me. "And she saw it, she knew, she came and told
me."

"She ...?"

"In-uh, Indigo. The woman who lives there. Dr. Van Zant's
friend."

"Not Indigo, Wish, that's not what you mean. Her name is
Ngaio."

"No," he shook his head vigorously, "Indigo. Like the color. It
means blue. She told me herself. That other name, it was a stage
name. She was supposed to be a man, it was supposed to look better
that way. You know, because a woman is supposed to be escorted,
there were places she couldn't go without a man and so Indigo
became a man. She's very tall. She told me all about it."

We were standing out on an expanse of packed dirt that I
presumed would one day become a sidewalk, having this bizarrely
significant conversation, yet all I could think was that Wish's
mind was not working right. Something was wrong with him, and I
didn't know quite what it was, or how to get at it, or how much
help he was going to be to me now. If the answer to the last
question were, as I began to fear, not much-well, I was in
trouble.

On the other hand, I was learning a lot, and we hadn't even
found Van Zant yet. I decided to stop worrying, take my time, and
go fishing in Wish Stephenson's mind.

"Who?" I asked forcefully. "Who was Indigo taking care of in
this unusual fashion?"

"Her sister. But her sister's gone away now. Indigo is waiting
for her to come back."

"The name, Wish, the sister's name!"

"I don't know. She never told me. She just . . ."To my great
surprise my seemingly innocent young policeman friend's face
flushed a mottled red, but only briefly, as if by an act of will he
could turn it on and off. "She was lonely. But she couldn't leave
in case her sister came back, and she walked the neighborhood all
the time for something to do, so she knew what was going on. She's
my source, Fremont. Only now
he's
got her."

"He got both of them, didn't he?" I muttered under my breath. I
did not mean Ngaio and Ingrid, I meant both mediums. Van Zant's
connection with Abigail Locke was in those letters: "Willie" was
none other than William Van Zant. I was sure of it, and I intended
to make him admit it. He had fallen in love with Abigail, courted
her up and down the Eastern seaboard some five and six years ago,
only to have her ultimately reject him. I surmised William Van
Zant's debunking activities, his presumed so pure interest in
science had begun then, in reaction to his ego's having been dealt
the blow of rejection by this tiny girl-woman in white. Abigail had
kept those letters as evidence, or perhaps she had tried to use
them to insure that he would leave her alone. Those letters were at
first amorous but later they turned ugly, threatening. Had he
killed her to get them back, and simply been unable to find them?
Or had it been a crime of passion, a once lost love rediscovered,
only to experience rejection again, and he'd snapped? Could I make
him tell?

How the man had connected with Ingrid Swann was harder to say,
though he had admitted that he'd come west precisely in order to do
his own kind of debunking on her. But why kill her? What had she
done? Did she reject him too?

Wish and I had stood there in front of that house for perhaps
five whole minutes, each of us quiet, preoccupied for different
reasons. Just as I was about to suggest we leave and return with
police backup, my friend and colleague drew his Colt revolver.

"Good!" I said approvingly but in a low voice. 'We may have need
of that, but not yet, I think. I propose we get out of here and
come back with some of your friends from the police. Some of the
more honest ones, not open to, shall we say, influence."