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"You believe me, don't you? I mean, you said you heard the . . .
the voice that came out of me. Surely that must be why Mrs. Locke
has summoned me, don't you think so, Fremont? How can I not
go?"

"Yes . . ."I said slowly, "it's very tempting. But are you sure
you can get away? What makes you think tomorrow will be any
different from today? Or did you think to run away again in
dressing gown and slicker?"

"No. I will be very, very good and contrite tonight. I'll
promise anything. And then Jeremy will go to work as usual tomorrow
morning and all will be well. That is, if you can come for me in
your car? Will you, Fremont? Oh, say that you will!"

I confess I did not like it. I was uncomfortable, and not
because Michael had told me to be wary of Frances, and not to get
between her and her husband. It was something else I could not
quite define, some nascent sense that warned of something wrong.
But it was all rather vague. In the end I could not deny help to a
friend, and a repressed friend, at that.

"I will come for you," I said. "I'll manage it somehow."

"Oh, thank you!" Frances gushed.

I frowned at her effusiveness and raised a finger to my lips in
that universal gesture for silence. "It will be easier for me if
Michael knows nothing of this," I said quietly. "Now, can you get
back to your house on your own? If I drive you, I'll have to tell
him I'm going out, and I'd rather not."

"I don't want to cause trouble for you, too, Fremont. I never
thought he might object," Frances whispered, reaching for my hand
and squeezing it tightly.

"It's all right," I hastened to assure her, "my life is very
much my own, but the car belongs to him. That's all."

"Oh, I see." She giggled, then covered her mouth. I smiled in
return-she was irrepressible. "Well, then," she said, "we shall do
fine, I'm sure. Until tomorrow then?"

I nodded. "Until tomorrow."

I stayed on my own again that night, which caused Michael to
raise a dark eyebrow, but no more than that. If he had heard me and
Frances talking in the kitchen, he said nothing of it, for which I
was grateful, because I really did not want to discuss it. We were
not in agreement, and that was that.

By morning I had invented a dental appointment for myself, which
necessitated my taking the Maxwell and Michael's watching the
office for an hour or so. While I was not entirely happy with this
subterfuge, on the other hand I did not want him to be concerned
about me either. What harm could possibly come of my driving a
friend a few blocks in broad daylight, at ten o'clock in the
morning, in a perfectly respectable part of town? Though to be
honest, it was a gloomy, gray sort of day, so "broad daylight" did
not precisely apply.

I drove right up under the
porte cochere,
as Frances had
suggested. She was waiting just inside the door, and in only a
matter of seconds she had seated herself beside me in the auto and
we were off for Octavia Street.

"You're quite nicely dressed this morning," I observed, "so may
I assume you had no further problem with your husband?" She did
look lovely, like a whiff of spring in a pale green suit of fine
wool with a fitted, waist-length jacket; the sleeves, the collar,
and the skirt were trimmed with narrow grosgrain ribbon in a darker
green. Wider ribbon of the same type made a flat bow at the back of
her upswept hair.

"You are looking well yourself, Fremont," she said in return,
but she lied. I wore my usual blue skirt and white blouse, beneath
a long knitted coat-sweater in a rather repulsive shade of garnet-
another remnant of my refugee status after the earthquake. The
sweater was warm, and the morning was cold, that was what
mattered.

"Jeremy is in a contrite phase," Frances continued, "he brought
home flowers last night. For a few days now I will be able to do no
wrong. I must enjoy it while it lasts. Oh, Fremont, I'm so excited
about this invitation
¹
."

"Perhaps it would be wise not to get one's hopes up," I
suggested, though I was somewhat excited myself. This Spiritualist
stuff intrigued me mightily. "After all, you don't know the purpose
of the meeting yet. You don't want to be disappointed."

"But even to be invited is an honor. To her
home,
Fremont
¹
. By her invitation
¹
Abigail Locke
may not be the most sensational medium in San Francisco, but she is
the most respected by-well, by people like you and me."

"And who is the most sensational?" I asked, curious. Having
successfully negotiated a long downhill section of street, I
glanced at Frances as I stopped at the corner for a
tattered-looking fellow to cross. Frances had that same
bright-eyed, feverish look I recalled only too well from the
seance.

"Ingrid Swann, but she's a fake. Or so I believe. She attracts
the largest crowds because she's very beautiful. Even the men adore
her. She works with a cabinet in a dark room and excels at
extruding ectoplasm."

Ugh! I thought. Out loud I wondered, "What good does it do her
to be beautiful if she's going to do her act in a dark room? And
how does that attract the men? It sounds remarkably unattractive to
me."

"I don't know, I'm sure, but it does. I even saw Patrick there
once. I suppose he was spying for Abigail-to find out how Ingrid
does it, you know. Extrudes the ectoplasm, I mean. It really is
most odd. The ectoplasm comes out of her mouth-''

I interrupted: "Excuse me, but here's Octavia Street. You will
have to watch the house numbers, if you don't mind." Ectoplasm from
the mouth, indeed! There had to be easier ways this Ingrid Swann
could have earned her living.

Abigail Locke's house on Octavia Street was an unimposing
buff-colored carpenter-gothic-style structure, whose finest
attribute was a bay window at one corner. Invitation in hand,
Frances stood on the stoop and rang the bell while I waited one
step below. I had offered to remain in the Maxwell, but Frances
wouldn't have it.

"Why isn't she answering?" Frances fretted, pushing the doorbell
again.

"Perhaps she's in the back." I turned my head and looked over at
the bay window, through which I could see a round table with a lamp
on it. In spite of the overall gloom, the lamp was not lit, which
surprised me.

"Oh, bother," said Frances, when still no one came. She stood on
tiptoes, shielded her eyes with her hand, and leaned against the
door, peering through a little oval of fancy pressed glass that had
been set into the wood. Then she lost her balance as the door began
to move, swinging inward of its own accord.

WAIT, FRANCES! Don't-" But my protest came too late. She had
already stumbled through the door and her voice, calling out, cut
off my own words.

"Mrs. Locke?" she called. 'Abigail, are you there?"

Silence.

We looked to the right, into the parlor: no one there. To the
left, into a small sitting room: no one there either.

Frances took a few steps forward. "Mrs. Locke? It is I, Frances
McFadden, come to keep our appointment."

I snatched at her elbow, intending to restrain her, but just as
I did so she moved another few steps and I missed. So I let her go
and stood stock-still to assess the situation. This house was
entirely too dark. It would have been dark in any case, since the
woodwork was all walnut or mahogany, or stained in imitation of
those fine woods; but it was midmorning on a gray day-there should
have been a light burning somewhere. On the stairs, or here in the
hall, or shining forth from the kitchen door.

Furthermore, it was too silent. I would have guessed its
occupants were sleeping, except that the door had been unlocked,
and in this city, even in a good neighborhood, one does not go to
bed-or remain there-without first locking the front door.

Nor does one sleep to midmorning when one has sent out an
invitation. My mind was all full of alarms. I broke my own silence,
and stillness, and strode after Frances, who by now had advanced
almost to the end of the hall. She was peering curiously into the
dining room when I caught up with her. I said in a harsh whisper:
"We should leave. We should not even have come in. Something is not
right here!"

In an odd, flat tone of voice, not matching my whisper at all,
Frances pronounced one word: "No."

My mind worked fast and clean as a lightning strike. I grabbed
my friend's hand and pulled her after me, back up the hall.
Speaking low and fast, I said, "We've seen enough. If Mrs. Locke is
in this house, she will be upstairs. No one has been down here this
morning."

"Then we will go up," Frances declared loudly, wrenching her
hand from mine with a vicious twist of her wrist. "I must see
her!"

Oh, help!
I thought, and warned, "This feels like a trap
to me."

"Don't be silly, Fremont," said Frances, sounding more like
herself as she rustled up the stairs. "Who would want to trap
us?"

"Any number of people I can think of," I grumbled under my
breath. But I followed her.

"Mrs. Locke, are you here? Mrs. Locke, it's Frances, I'm
concerned about you!"

The stairs went straight up without a turning, and so deposited
us at the rear of the house on the second floor. It was slightly
brighter up here, as the dark wood stopped at chair-rail height and
the walls had been covered with a cream damask wallpaper. Thinking
that if we must do this it had best be done quickly, I took
charge.

"Her bedroom will be at the front, no doubt," I said, moving
ahead of Frances and marching purposefully onward.

"I wonder where everyone is," Frances fretted. "I would have
thought she'd have a maid."

I myself would have thought the hawk-faced Patrick would be
somewhere about; I rather doubted mediums could afford maids. I
reached the front bedroom a few steps ahead of my friend. The door
was open. The medium slept in a monstrous great bed with an ivory
canopy . . . but I did not think she was sleeping. In the doorway I
turned. "Don't touch anything," I said, for I knew with a certainty
what we would find, and that Frances would not be satisfied until
we'd found it.

Until we'd found
her.

Yes, the shape in the bed was indeed Abigail Locke. And she was
indeed dead.

Frances said, "Oh-" ending in a strangled sound, deep in her
throat.

"Stabbed while she was sleeping, I should guess," I murmured.
Stabbed through the heart-or, at least, in the chest. There was a
lot of blood, which had pooled around her; the smell of it was not
noticeable until one had approached close to the bed.

For a moment I forgot Frances as Michael's lessons took over my
mind: Observe, observe! What do you see? I saw Abigail Locke's eyes
were closed, which meant either she had been dispatched without
awakening, which seemed hardly likely unless she'd been drugged, or
the killer had closed her eyes for her; I saw there had not been
much of a struggle. It was a relatively neat, clean kill by someone
who knew enough, and had strength enough, to strike the fatal blow
straight off. By the color of theblood, I saw she had been killed
not long before our arrival, which set off yet another alarm in my
mind. And of course I also saw the knife, which had the look of a
ritual dagger. It had been withdrawn from the wound and laid
carefully between the medium's breasts. The dagger's hilt lay in
her blood like a cross on a crimson field.

Frances had begun to breathe convulsively, with her hand over
her mouth and nose. Her eyes were unnaturally wide. She swayed, as
if she might fall, and her other hand reached out for the bedpost
to steady herself. But I stepped in and caught hold of her before
she'd touched it.

"We must leave," I whispered fiercely, "now! This very
minute!"

Frances rolled her eyes, but she shook her head and wouldn't
budge. "How can you say such a thing? We can't leave her like . . .
like that! She must have a telephone. We'll call the police."

Shaking my head, I took Frances's shoulders in my hands and
forced her back from the bed. "Trust me. We must go. I'll explain
when we're away from here."

I was so anxious I felt as if ants were crawling all over my
body. Every element in my sensorium-hearing, sight, smell, touch,
even taste, for I could taste the blood in my mouth-had been
sharpened to an excruciating pitch. Frances didn't move fast enough
for me, so I dragged her, mercilessly. Down the hall, down the
stairs, out the front door.

"Go on to the Maxwell," I commanded, "there's something I must
do so that no one will ever know we were here."

"Fremont!" Tears brimmed in her eyes, but she went.

Michael had taught me about fingerprinting, a technique of
criminal detection developed in England, which had been in use by
Scotland Yard for some years and is now sometimes done here. Taking
my handkerchief from my skirt pocket, I wiped the front door and
the doorknob. Then I went back into that dreadful house and wiped
the stair rail from top to bottom, on the chance that one of us had
touched it, for I really could not remember. While on the stairs I
strained my ears so hard I felt my head would break, but I heard
nothing. My heart leapt with gratitude for that, and I turned and
ran.