Why Not You and I?

BLUE LADY, COME BACK

This one starts with a blazing bright day and a trim split-level house looking woodsy against the pines.

Wind shrieked a howling toscin as John Chance slewed his Duesenberg Torpedo down the streaming mountain road. A sudden burst of lightning picked out the sinister silhouette of legend-haunted Corrington Manor, hunched starkly against the storm-swept Adirondacks. John Chance’s square jaw was grim-set as he scowled at the Georgian mansion just ahead. Why had lovely Gayle Corrington’s hysterical phone call been broken off in the midst of her plea for help? Could even John Chance thwart the horror of the Corrington Curse from striking terror on the eve of Gayle and young Hartley’s wedding?

“Humph,” was the sour comment of Curtiss Stryker, who four decades previous had thrilled thousands of pulp readers with his yarns of John Chance, psychic detective. He stretched his bony legs from the cramped interior of his friend’s brand-new Jensen Interceptor and stood scowling through the blacktop’s heat.

“Well, seems like that’s the way a haunted house ought to be approached,” Mandarin went on, joining him on the sticky asphalt driveway.

Stryker twitched a grin. Sixty years had left his tall, spare frame gristled and knobby, like an old pine on a rocky slope. His face was tanned and seamed, set off the bristling white mustache and close-cut hair that had once been blond. Mandarin always thought he looked like an old sea captain — and recalled that Stryker had sailed on a Norwegian whaler in his youth.

“Yeah, and here comes the snarling mastiff,” Stryker obliged him.

A curious border collie peered out from around the Corvette in the carport, wondered if it ought to bark. Russ whistled, and the dog wagged over to be petted.

The yard was just mowed, and someone had put a lot of care into the rose beds that bordered the flagstone walk. That and the pine woods gave the place a cool, inviting atmosphere — more like a mountain cabin than a house only minutes outside Knoxville’s sooty reach. The house had an expensive feel about it. Someone had hired an architect — and a good one — to do the design. Mountain stone and untreated redwood on the outside walls; cedar shakes on the roof; copper flashings; long areas of glass. Its split-level design adapted to the gentle hillside, seemed to curl around the grey outcroppings of limestone.

“Nice place to haunt,” Mandarin reflected.

“I hope you’re going to keep a straight face once we get inside,” his friend admonished gruffly “Mrs Corrington was a little reluctant to have us come here at all. Doesn’t want folks laughing, calling her a kook. People from all over descending on her to investigate her haunted house. You know what it’d be like.”

“I’ll maintain my best professional decorum.”

Styker grunted. He could trust Russ, or he wouldn’t have invited him along. A psychiatrist at least knew how to listen, ask questions without making his informant shut up in embarrassment. And Russ’s opinion of Gayle Corrington’s emotional stability would be valuable— Stryker had wasted too many interviews with cranks and would-be psychics whose hauntings derived from their own troubled minds. Besides, he knew Mandarin was interested in this sort of thing and would welcome a diversion from his own difficulties.

“Well, let’s go inside before we boil over,” Stryker decided.

Russ straightened from petting the dog, carelessly wiped his long-fingered hands on his lightweight sportcoat. About half the writer’s age, he was shorter by a couple inches, heavier by forty pounds. He wore his bright-black hair fashionably long for the time, and occasionally trimmed his long mustache. Piercing blue eyes beneath a prominent brow dominated his thin face. Movie-minded patients had told him variously that he reminded them of Terence Stamp or Bruce Dern, and Russ asked them how they felt about that.

On the flagstone walk the heady scent of warm roses washed out the taint of the asphalt. Russ thought he heard the murmur of a heat pump around back. It would be cool inside, then — earlier he had envied Stryker for his open-collar sportshirt.

The panelled door had a bell push, but Stryker crisply struck the brass knocker. The door quickly swung open, and Russ guessed their hostess had been politely waiting for their knock.

Cool air and a faint perfume swirled from within. “Please come in,” Mrs Corrington invited.

She was blond and freckled, had stayed away from the sun enough so that her skin still looked fresh at the shadow of forty. Enough of her figure was displayed by the backless hostess ensemble she wore to prove she had taken care of herself in other respects as well. It made both men remember that she was divorced.

“Mrs Corrington? I’m Curtiss Stryker.”

“Please call me Gayle. I’ve read enough of your books to feel like an old friend.”

Stryker beamed and bent low over her hand in the continental mannerisms Russ always wished he was old enough to pull off. “Then make it Curt, Gayle. And this is Dr Mandarin.”

“Russ,” said Mandarin, shaking her hand.

“Dr Mandarin is interested in this sort of thing, too,” Stryker explained. “I wanted him to come along so a man of science could add his thoughts to what you have to tell us.”

“Oh, are you with the university center here, Dr Mandarin?”

“Please— Russ. No, not any longer.” He kept the bitterness from his voice. “I’m in private practice in the university area.”

“Your practice is…?”

“I’m a psychiatrist.”

Her green eyes widened, then grew wary— the usual response — but she recovered easily. “Can I fix something for you gentlemen? Or is it too early in the afternoon for drinks? I’ve got ice tea.”

“Sun’s past the yardarm,” Stryker told her quickly. “Gin and tonic for me.”

“Scotch for you, Russ?” she asked.

“Bourbon and ice, if you have it.”

“Well, you must be a southern psychiatrist.”

“Russ is from way out west,” Stryker filled in smoothly. “But he’s lived around here a good long while. I met him when he was doing an internship at the Center here, and I had an appendix that had waited fifty years to go bad. Found out he was an old fan — even had a bunch of my old pulp yarns on his shelves alongside my later books. Showed me a fan letter one magazine had published: he’d written it when he was about twelve asking that they print more of my John Chance stories. Kept tabs on each other ever since.”

She handed them their drinks, poured a bourbon and ginger ale for herself.

“Well, of course I’ve only read your serious stuff. The mysteries you’ve had in paperback, and the two books on the occult.”

“Do you like to read up on the occult?” Russ asked, mentally correcting her—three books on the occult.

“Well, I never have…you know…believed in ghosts and like that. But when all this started, I began to wonder — so I checked out a few books. I’d always liked Mr Stryker’s mystery novels, so I was especially interested to read what he had to say on the subject of hauntings. Then, when I found out that he was a local author, and that he was looking for material for a new book — well, I got up my courage and wrote to him. I hope you didn’t think I was some sort of nut.”

“Not at all!” Stryker assured her. “But suppose we sit down and have you tell us about it. From your letter and our conversation on the phone, I gather this is mostly poltergeist-like phenomena.” Gayle Corrington’s flair-legged gown brushed against the varnished hardwood floor as she led them to her living room. A stone fireplace with raised hearth of used brick made up one wall. Odd bits of antique ironware were arranged along the hearth; above the mantelpiece hung an engraved double-barrelled shotgun. Walnut panelling enclosed the remainder of the room — panelling, not plywood, Russ noted. Chairs and a sofa were arranged informally about the Couristan carpet. Russ dropped onto a cream leather couch and looked for a place to set his drink.

Stryker was digging a handful of salted nuts from the wooden bowl on the low table beside his chair. “Suppose you start with the history of the house?” he suggested.

Sipping nervously from her glass, Gayle settled crosslegged next to the hearth. Opposite her a large area of sliding glass panels opened onto the sun-bright back yard. A multitude of birds and two fat squirrels worked at the feeders positioned beneath the pines. The dogs sat on the patio expectantly, staring back at them through the glass door.

Gayle drew up her freckled shoulders and began. “Well, the house was put up about ten years back by two career girls.”

“Must have had some money,” Russ interposed.

“They were sort of in your line of work — they were medical secretaries at the psychiatric unit. And they had, well, a relationship together.”

“How do you mean that?” Stryker asked, opening his notepad. Mrs Corrington blushed. “They were lesbians.”

This was heavy going for a Southern Belle, and she glanced at their composed expressions, then continued. “So they built this place under peculiar conditions— sort of man and wife, if you follow. No legal agreement as to what belonged to whom. That became important afterward.

“Listen, this is, well, personal information. Will it be OK for me to use just first names?”

“I promise you this will be completely confidential,” Stryker told her gravely.

“I was worried about your using this in your new book on haunted houses of the South.”

“If I can’t preserve your confidence, then I promise you I won’t use it at all.”

“All right then. The two women were Libby and Cass.”

Mandarin made a mental note.

“They lived together here for about three years. Then Libby died. She was only about thirty.”

“Do you know what she died of?” Russ asked.

“I found out after I got interested in this. How’s the song go—‘too much pills and liquor.’”

“Seems awfully young.”

“She hadn’t been taking care of herself. One night she passed out after tying one on, and she died in the hospital emergency room.”

“Did the hauntings start then?”

“Well, there’s no way to be sure. The house stood empty for a couple of years afterward. Legal problems. Libby’s father hadn’t cared for her lifestyle, and when she died he saw to it that Cass couldn’t buy Libby’s share of the house and property. That made Cass angry, so she wouldn’t sell out her share. Finally they agreed on selling the house and land, lock, stock and barrel, and dividing the payment. That’s when I bought it.”

“No one else has ever lived here, then?”

Gayle hesitated a moment. “No — except for a third girl they had here once — a nurse. They rented a third bedroom to her. But that didn’t work out, and she left after a few months. Otherwise, I’m the only other person to live here.”

“It seems a little large for one person,” Stryker observed.

“Not really I have a son in college now who stays here over breaks. And now and then a niece comes to visit. So the spare rooms are handy.”

“Well, what happened after you moved in?”

She wrinkled her forehead. “Just… well, a series of things. Just strange things…

“Lights wouldn’t stay on or off. I used to think I was just getting absent-minded, but then I began to pay careful attention. Like I’d go off to a movie, then come back and find the carport light off — when the switch was inside. It really scared me. There’s other houses closer now, but this is a rural area pretty much. Prissy’s company, but I don’t know if she could fight off a prowler. I keep a gun.”

“Has an electrician ever checked your wiring?”

“No. It was OK’ed originally, of course.”

“Can anyone break in without your having realized it?”

“No. You see, I’m worried about break-ins, as I say I’ve got double locks on all the doors, and the windows have special locks. Someone would have to break the glass, or pry open the woodwork around the doors — leave marks. That’s never happened.

“And other things seem to turn on and off. My electric toothbrush, for instance. I told my son and he laughed — then one night the light beside his bed flashed off.”

“Presumably you could trace all this to electrical disturbances,” Russ pointed out.

Gayle gestured toward the corner of the living room. “All right. See that wind-up Victrola? No electricity. Yet the damn thing turns itself on. Several times at night I’ve heard it playing — that old song, you know…”

She sang a line or two: “Come back, blue lady come back. Don’t be blue anymore…”

Stryker quickly moved to the machine. It was an old Victrola walnut veneer console model, with speaker and record storage in the lower cabinet. He lifted the hinged lid. It was heavy. Inside, the huge tonearm was swomg back on its pivot.

“Do you keep a record on the turntable normally?”

“Yes. I like to show the thing off. But I’m certain I haven’t left ‘Blue Skirt Waltz’ on every time.”

“It’s on now.”

“Yes, I leave it there now.”

“Why not get rid of the record as an experiment?”

“What could I think if I found it back again?”

Stryker grinned. He moved the starting lever with his finger. The turntable began to spin.

“You keep this thing wound?” Russ asked.

“Yes,” Gayle answered uneasily Curtiss swung the hinged tonearm down, rested the thick steel needle on the shellac disc.

I dream of that flight with you

Darling, when first we met…

“Turn it off again — please!”

Stryker hastily complied. “Just wanted to see what was involved in turning it on.”

“Sorry,” Gayle apologized. “The thing has gotten on my nerves, I guess. How about refills all around?”

“Fine,” Stryker agreed, taking a final chew on his lime twist.

When their hostess had disappeared into the kitchen with their glasses, he murmured aside to Mandarin: “What do you think?”

Russ shrugged. “What can I say from a few minutes talking, listening to her? There’s no blatant elevation of her porcelain titer, if that’s what you mean.”

“What’s that mean?” the writer asked, annoyed.

“She doesn’t come on as an outright crock.”

Stryker’s mustache twitched. “Think I’ll write that down.”

He did.

“Useful for rounds,” Russ explained in apology.

“What about the occult angle? So far I’m betting on screwy electrical wiring and vibrations from passing trucks or something.”

Stryker started to reply, but then Gayle Corrington rustled back, three glasses and a wedge of cheese on a tray.

“I’ve been told most of this can be explained by wiring problems or vibrations,” she was saying. “Like when the house settles on its foundation.”

Russ accepted his drink with aplomb — wondering if she had overheard.

“But I asked the real estate man about that,” she went on, “and he told me the house rests on bedrock. You’ve seen the limestone outcroppings in the yard. They even had to use dynamite putting down the foundation footings.”

“Is there a cellar?”

“No. Not even a crawl space. But I have storage in the carport and in the spare rooms. There’s a gardening shed out back, you’ll notice — by the crepe myrtle. Libby liked to garden. All these roses were her doing. I pay a man from the nursery to keep them up for me. Seems like Libby would be sad if I just let them go to pot.”

“Do you feel like Libby is still here?” Russ asked casually.

She hadn’t missed the implication, and Russ wished again Curtiss hadn’t introduced him as a psychiatrist. “Well, yes,” she answered cautiously. “I hope that doesn’t sound neurotic.”

“Has anything happened that you feel can’t be explained — well, by the usual explanations?” Curtiss asked, steering the interview toward safer waters.

“Poltergeist phenomena, you mean? Well, I’ve only touched on that. One night the phone cord started swinging back and forth. All by itself— nothing near it. I was sitting out here reading when I saw that happen. Then my maid was here one afternoon when all the paper cups dropped out of the dispenser and started rolling up and down the kitchen counter. Another night that brass table lamp there started rocking back and forth on its base — just like someone had struck it. Of course, I was the only one here. Christ, I felt like yelling, ‘Libby! Cut it out!”’

“Is there much truck traffic on the highway out front?” Stryker asked. “Stone transmits vibrations a long way, and if the house rests on bedrock…”

“No truck traffic to speak of — not since the Interstates were completed through Knoxville. Maybe a pickup or that sort of thing drives by. I’ve thought of that angle, too.

“But, darn it — there’s too many other things.” Her face seemed defiant. She’s thought a lot about this, Russ surmised — and now that she’s decided to tell someone else about it, she doesn’t want to be taken for a credulous fool.

“Like my television.” She pointed to the color portable resting on one end of the long raised hearth. “If you’ve ever tried to lug one of these things around, you know how portable they really are. I keep it here because I can watch it either from that chair or when I’m out sunning on the patio. Twice though I’ve come back and found it’s somehow slid down the hearth a foot or so. I noticed because the picture was blocked by the edge of that end table when I tried to watch from my lounge chair on the patio. And I know the other furniture wasn’t out of place, because I line the set up with that cracked brick there — so I know I can see it from the patio, in case I’ve moved it around someplace else. Both times it was several inches past that brick.”

Russ examined the set, a recent portable model. One edge of its simulated walnut chassis was lined up one row of bricks down from where a crack caused by heat expansion crossed the hearth. He pushed at the set experimentally. It wouldn’t slide.

“Tell me truck vibrations were responsible for this” Gayle challenged.

“Your cleaning maid…”

“Had not been in either time. Nor had anyone else in the time between when I noticed it and when I’d last watched it from outside.”

“No one else that you knew of.”

“No one at all. I could have told if there’d been a break-in. Besides, a burglar would have stolen the darn thing.”

Russ smoothed his mustache thoughtfully. Stryker was scribbling energetically on his notepad.

Gayle pressed home her advantage. “I asked Cass about it once. She looked at me funny and said they used to keep their TV on the hearth, too — only over a foot or so, because the furniture was arranged differently.”

Stryker’s grey eyes seemed to glow beneath his shaggy eyebrows. Russ knew the signs— Curtiss was on the scent.

Trying to control his own interest, Russ asked: “Cass is still in Knoxville, then?”

Gayle appeared annoyed with herself. “Yes, that’s why I wanted to keep this confidential. She and another girl have set up together in an old farmhouse they’ve redone — out toward Norris.”

“There’s no need for me to mention names or details of personal life,” Curtiss reassured her. “But I take it you’ve said something to Cass about these happenings?”

“Well, yes. She had a few things stored out in the garden shed that she finally came over to pick up. Most of the furnishings were jointly owned — I bought them with the house — but there was some personal property, items I didn’t want.” She said the last with a nervous grimace.

“So I came flat out and said to her: ‘Cass, did you ever think this house was haunted?’ and she looked at me and said quite seriously: ‘Libby?’”

“She didn’t seem incredulous?”

“No. Just like that, She said: ‘Libby?’ Didn’t sound surprised — a little shaken maybe. I told her about some of the things here, and she just shrugged. I didn’t need her to think I was out of my mind, so I left off. But that’s when I started to think about Libby’s spirit lingering on here.”

“She seemed to take it rather matter-of-factly.” Russ suggested. “I think she and Libby liked to dabble in the occult. There were a few books of that sort that Cass picked up — a Ouija board, tarot deck, black candles, a few other things like that. And I believe there was something said about Libby’s dying on April the 30th — that’s Walpurgis Night, I learned from my reading.”

Witches’ Sabbat, Russ reflected. So he was going to find his gothic trappings after all.

It must have showed on his face. “Nothing sinister about her death,” Gayle told him quickly. “Sordid maybe, but thoroughly prosaic. She was dead by the time they got her to the emergency room, and a check of her bloodstream showed toxic levels of alcohol and barbs. Took a little prying to get the facts on that. Family likes the version where she died of a heart attack or something while the doctors worked over her.

“But let me freshen those ice cubes for you. This show-and-tell session is murder on the throat.”

Stryker hopped out of his chair. “Here, we’ll carry our own glasses.”

Smiling, she led them into the kitchen. Russ lagged behind to work at the cheese. He hadn’t taken time for lunch, and he’d better put something in his stomach besides bourbon.

“There’s another thing,” Gayle was saying when he joined them. “The antique clocks.”

Russ followed her gesture. The ornate dial of a pendulum wall clock stared back at him from the dining room wall. He remembered the huge walnut grandfather’s clock striking solemnly in the corner of the living room.

“Came back one night and found both cabinets wide open. And you have to turn a key to open the cabinets.”

“Like this?” Stryker demonstrated on the wall clock.

“Yes. I keep the keys in the locks because I need to reset the pendulum weights. But as you see, it takes a sharp twist to turn the lock. Explain that one for me.”

Russ sipped his drink. She must have poured him a good double. “Have you ever thought that someone might have a duplicate key to one of the doors?” he asked.

“Yes,” Gayle answered, following his train of thought. “That occurred to me some time ago — though God knows what reason there might be to pull stunts like these. But I had every lock in the house changed — that was after I had come back and found lights on or off that had been left off or on one time too many to call it absent-mindedness. It made no difference, and both the TV and the clock incidents took place since then.”

“You know, this is really intriguing!” Curtiss exclaimed, beaming over his notepad.

Gayle smiled back, seemed to be fully at ease for the first time. “Well, I’ll tell you it had me baffled. Here, let me show you the rest of the house.”

A hallway led off from the open space between living room and dining area. There was a study off one side, another room beyond, and two bedrooms opposite. A rather large tile bath with sunken tub opened at the far end.

“The study’s a mess, I’m afraid,” she apologized, closing the door on an agreeably unkempt room that seemed chiefly cluttered with fashion magazines and bits of dress material. “And the spare bedroom I only use for storage.” She indicated the adjoining room, but did not offer to open it. “My son sleeps here when he’s home.”

“You keep it locked?” Russ asked, noting the outdoor-type lock. “No.” Gayle hastily turned the knob for them, opened the door on a room cluttered with far more of the same as her study. There was a chain lock inside, another door on the outside wall. “As you see, this room has a private entrance. This is the room they rented out.”

“Their boarder must have felt threatened,” Russ remarked. He received a frown that made him regret his levity.

“These are the bedrooms.” She turned to the hallway opposite. “This was Cass’s.” A rather masculine room with knotty pine panelling, a large brass bed, cherry furnishings, and an oriental throw rug on the hardwood floor. “And this was Libby’s.” Blue walls, white ceiling, white deep-pile carpet, queen-sized bed with a blue quilted spread touching the floor on three sides. In both rooms sliding glass doors opened onto the backyard.

“Where do you sleep?” Russ wanted to know.

“In the other bedroom. I find this one a bit too frilly”

“Have you ever, well, seen anything — any sort of, say, spiritual manifestations?” Stryker asked.

“Myself, no,” Gayle told them. “Though there are a few things. My niece was staying with me one night not long after I’d moved in — sleeping in Libby’s room. Next morning she said to me: ‘Gayle, that room is haunted. All night I kept waking up thinking someone else was there with me.’ I laughed, but she was serious.”

“Is that when you started thinking in terms of ghosts?”

“Well, there had been a few things before that,” she admitted. “But I suppose that was when I really started noticing things.”

Russ chalked up a point for his side.

“But another time a friend of mine dropped by to visit. I was out of town, so no one answered her ring. Anyway, she heard voices and figured I was in back watching tv, with the set drowning out the doorbell. So she walked around back. I wasn’t here, of course. No one was here. And when she looked inside from the patio, she could see that my set was turned off. She was rather puzzled when she told me about it. I told her a radio was left on — only that wasn’t true.”

“The dog ever act strangely?” Stryker asked.

“Not really. A few times she seems a little nervous is all. She’s a good watchdog though — barks at strangers. That’s one reason why I don’t suspect prowlers. Prissy lets me know when something’s going on that she doesn’t like.

“Aside from that, the only other thing I can think of is one night when my son was here alone. I got back late and he was sitting in the living room awake. Said he’d seen a sort of blue mist taking shape in the darkness of his bedroom — like a naked woman. Well, the only mist was the smoke you could still smell from the pot party he and his friends had had here earlier. We had a long talk about that little matter.”

Stryker studied his notepad. “I’d like to suggest a minor experiment of sorts, if you don’t mind. I’d like for Russ and myself to take a turn just sitting alone in Libby’s room for a few minutes. See what impressions we have — if any.”

“I’ll take first watch,” Russ decided, at their hostess’s expression of consent.

Curtiss shot him a warning glance and returned with Gayle to the living room.

Waiting until they were around the corner, Mandarin stepped into the room now occupied by Gayle Corrington. Cass’s room. There was a scent of perfume and such, a soft aura of femininity that he hadn’t noticed from the hallway. It softened the masculine feel of the room somewhat, gave it sort of a ski lodge atmosphere. The bedroom had the look of having been recently straightened for company’s inspection. As was the case. There were crescent scratches about three feet up on the corner panelling next to the head of the bed, and Russ guessed that the pump shotgun did not usually hang from brackets on the bedroom wall as it did now.

The bathroom was out of Nero’s mountain retreat. Big enough to play tennis in, with synthetic-fur rugs scattered on the slate-tiled floor, and with a dressing table and elaborate toilet fixtures that matched the tiles and included a bidet. A cross between a boudoir and the Roman baths. The sunken tub was a round affair and like an indoor pool. Russ wondered if the mirror on the ceiling fogged up when things got hot.

Swallowing the rest of his drink, he stepped into the guest room. Libby’s room. This would, of course, be the Blue Room in one of those sprawling mansions where pulp mysteries had a habit of placing their murders. Come to think of it, hadn’t he seen an old ’30s movie called something like The Secret of the Blue Room?

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he crunched an ice cube and studied the room about him. Very feminine — though the brightness of the patio outside kept it from becoming cloying. It had a comfortable feel about it, he decided — not the disused sensation that generally hangs over a guest room. There was just a hint of perfume still lingering — probably Gayle kept clothes in the closet here.

Russ resisted the temptation to lie down. Glancing outside, he reflected that, when drawn, the blue curtains would fill the room with blue light. Might be a point worth bringing up to Curtiss, in case the old fellow got too excited over ectoplasm and the like. Aside from that, Russ decided that the room was as thoroughly unhaunted as any bedroom he’d ever sat in.

Giving it up at length, he ambled back to the living room.

Stryker was just closing his notepad. Either he’d got another drink, or else he’d been too interested to do more than sip his gin and tonic. At Mandarin’s entry, he excused himself and strode off for the bedroom.

Gayle’s face was a trifle flushed, her manner somewhat nervous. Russ wondered whether it was the liquor, or if he’d broken in on something. She had that familiar edgy look of a patient after an hour of soul-bearing on the analyst’s couch. As he thought about it, Russ agreed that this interview must be a similar strain for her.

“You’ve eaten your ice cubes,” she observed. “Shall I get you another?”

Russ swallowed a mouthful of salted nuts. “Thank you— but I’ve got to drive.”

She made a wry face. “You look big enough to hold another few. A light one,then?”

“Hell, why not. A light one, please.” Probably she would feel more at ease if she supposed his psychiatric powers were disarmed by bourbon.

He paced about the living room while she saw to his glass. Coming to the fireplace, he studied the beautifully engraved shotgun that hung there. It was a Parker. Russ started to touch it.

“That’s loaded.”

He jerked back his hand like a scolded kid. “Sorry. Just wanted to get the feel of an engraved Parker double-barrel. That’s some gun you have to decorate your fireplace with.”

“Thank you. I know.” She handed him his drink.

“Don’t you worry about keeping a loaded shotgun in your living room?” The drink was at least equal to its predecessors.

“I’d worry more with an empty one. I’m alone here at night, and there aren’t many neighbors. Besides, there aren’t any kids around who might get in trouble with it.”

“I’d think a woman would prefer something easier to handle than a shotgun.”

“Come out on the skeet range with me sometime, and I’ll show you something.”

Mandarin must have looked properly chastened. With a quick grin Gayle drew down the weapon, opened the breech, and extracted two red shells. “Here.” She handed the shotgun to him.

“Double Ought,” Russ observed, closing the breech.

“It’s not for shooting starlings.”

He sighted along the barrel a few times, gave it back. Briskly she replaced the shells and returned it to its mounting.

“Might I ask what you do, Mrs Corrington?”

“Gayle. I assume you mean for a living. I own and manage a mixed bag of fashion stores — two here in Knoxville, plus a resort wear shop in Gatlinburg, and a boutique on the Strip by the University. So you see, Doctor, not all working girls fall into the nurse or secretary system of things.”

“Russ. No, of course not. Some of them make excellent psychiatrists.”

She softened again. “Sorry for coming on strong for women’s lib. Just that you find yourself a little defensive after being questioned for an hour.”

“Sorry about that.” Russ decided not to remind her that this was at her own invitation. “But this has been extremely interesting, and Curtiss is like a bloodhound on a fresh trail.

“But how do you feel about this, Gayle?” Do you believe a poltergeist or some sort of spirit has attached itself to the house?”

She gave him a freckled frown and shrugged her shoulders. No, Russ concluded, she wasn’t wearing some sort of backless bra beneath her gown — not that she needed one.

“Well, I can’t really say. I mean, there’s just been so many things happening that I can’t explain. No, I don’t believe in witches and vampires and ghosts all draped in bedsheets, if that’s what you mean. But some of the books I’ve read explain poltergeists on an ESP basis — telekinesis or something on that order.”

“Do you believe in ESP?”

“Yes, to an extent.”

“Do you consider yourself psychic?”

She did the thing with her shoulders again. “A little maybe. I’ve had a few experiences that are what the books put down as psychic phenomena. I guess most of us have. But now it’s my turn. What do you think, Russ? Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Well, not the chain-rattling kind anyway.”

“Then ESP?”

“Yes, I’ll have to admit to a weakness toward ESP.”

“Then here’s to ESP.”

They clinked glasses and drank.

“I’ll second that,” announced Stryker, rejoining them.

“Jesus!” Stryker swore. “Slow down, Russ!” He braced himself with one hand against the dash, almost slung out of his bucket seat as the Jensen took a curve at 70.

“Use the seat belt,” advised Mandarin, slowing down somewhat. After all, he was a little high to be pushing the car this hard.

“Don’t like them,” Curtiss grunted. “The harnesses make me claustrophobic.”

“They say they’re someday going to pass a law making it compulsory to wear them.”

“Like to see them try — we’re not to 1984 yet! Why don’t the prying bastards work to prevent accidents instead of putting all their bright ideas into ways of letting the damn fools who cause them live through it. And speaking of prevention, how about slowing this sports car down to legal velocities. The cops would sure like to nail you on a drunk driving charge.”

“Who’s drunk?” Russ slowed to 65, the legal limit for noninterstate highways.

“Son, you had a few before you picked me up this noon — and Gayle Corrington wasn’t running up her water bill on those drinks she poured for us.”

Russ veered from the ragged shoulder of the old two-lane blacktop. “If she starts the day customarily with drinks like she was pouring for me, I think I know where her poltergeist comes from.”

“You weren’t impressed?” Stryker sounded amused. “But you’ll admit natural explanations get a little forced and tenuous after a while.”

A stop sign bobbed over the crest of a hill, and Russ hit the brakes hard. Four disc brakes brought the Jensen up almost in its length. Stryker uncovered his eyes.

“Yeah,” Russ went on. “There were a number of damned things she said that sounded like telling points in favor of a poltergeist. But you have to bear in mind that all this is by her unsupported evidence. Hell, we can’t be sure she isn’t hallucinating this stuff, or even just making the whole thing up to string you along. Women do get bored at fortyish — to say nothing of what the thought of starting over the hill does to their libidos.”

“She didn’t look bored — and certainly not headed over the hill. Another few years, my friend, and you’ll stop thinking of womanhood withering at thirty. Hell, it’s just starting to bloom. But do you think she’s unreliable? Seemed to be just the opposite. A level-headed woman who was frankly baffled and a little embarrassed with the entire affair.”

Russ grunted, unwilling to agree offhand — though these were his own impressions as well. “I’m just saying you need to keep everything in perspective. I’ve gotten fooled by too many patients with a smooth façade — even when I was expecting things to be different beneath the surface.”

“But you’ll hazard an opinion that Mrs Corrington is playing straight with us so far as signs indicate?” Stryker persisted.

“Yeah,” Mandarin conceded. “But that’s one tough woman lurking beneath all that sweet Southern Belle charm she knows how to turn on. Watch out.”

He turned onto the Interstate leading into Knoxville’s downtown. In deference to Curtiss’s uneasiness with high speed, he held the needle at 80, safely just over the 75 limit of the time. “What’s your opinion of it all, then?” the author prodded.

“Well, I’ll maintain scientific neutrality. While I consider poltergeists improbable, I’ll accept the improbable when the probable explanations have all been eliminated.”

“Nicely phrased, Holmes,” Stryker chuckled. “And taking a position that will have you coming out sounding correct no matter what.”

“The secret of medical training.”

“I knew you’d come in handy for something.”

“Well, then, what’s your opinion?”

The author decided it was safe to release the dashboard and light his pipe. “Well, I guess I’ve used the supernatural too often in my fiction to accept it as willingly as I might otherwise. Seems every time I start gathering the facts on something like this, I find myself studying it as a fiction plot. You know like those yarns I used to crank out for pulps like Dime Mystery Stories, where when you get to the end you learn that the Phantom of Ghastly Manor was really Cousin Rodney dressed up in a monster suit so he could murder Uncle Ethelred and claim the inheritance before the will was changed. Something like that. I start putting facts together like I was plotting a murder thriller, you know. Kind of spoils the effect for me. This thing, for instance…”

Russ cursed and braked viciously to avoid the traffic stopped ahead at Malfunction Junction. Knoxville’s infamous rush hour tangle had the Interstate blocked solid ahead of them. Swerving onto the shoulder, he darted for the upcoming exit and turned toward the University section. Curtiss seemed about to bite his pipe in two.

“Stop off at the Yardarm? I don’t want to fight this traffic.” Stryker thought he could use a drink.

Safely seated in a back booth, stein of draft in hand, Curtiss regained his color. It was a favorite bar — just off the Strip section of the University area. When Stryker had first come to the area years back, it had been a traditional Rathskeller college bar. Styles had changed, and so had students. Long hair had replaced crewcuts, Zen and revolution had shoved fraternities and football from conversational standards, and there was a faint hint of marijuana discernible through the beer smell. Someone had once suggested changing the name of the Yardarm to the Electric Foreskin or some such, and had been tossed out for his own good.

Stryker didn’t care. He’d been coming here for years — sometimes having a round with his creative writing students. Now — well, if they wanted to talk football, he’d played some; if they wanted to talk revolution, he’d fought in some. The beer was good, and the atmosphere not too frantic for conversation.

His office was a block or two away — an upstairs room in a ramshackle office building only slightly less disreputable in appearance than the dilapidated Edwardian mansion turned community clinic where Russ worked. This was several blocks in the other direction, so the bar made a convenient meeting place for them. Afternoons often found the pair talking over a pitcher of beer (Knoxville bars could not serve liquor at the time), and the bartender — a huge red-bearded Viking named Blackie — knew them both by name.

“You were saying that your faith in the supernatural was fraught with skepticism,” Mandarin reminded, wiping foam from his mustache.

“No. I said it was tempered with rationality,” Stryker hedged. “That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in the supernatural. It means I examine facts with several of those famous grains of salt before I offer them to my readers.”

“I take it then you’re going to use this business today in your new book.”

Stryker nodded enthusiastically. “It’s worth a chapter, I’m certain.”

“Well, that’s your judgement, of course,” commented Mandarin, glancing at his watch. “Personally, I didn’t read any irrefutable evidence of the supernatural into all this.”

“Science scoffing under the shadow of truths inadmissible to its system of logic.” Stryker snorted. “You’re as blind in your beliefs as the old-guard priesthood holding the bastions of disease-by-wrath-of-God against the germ-theory heretics.”

“I suppose,” Russ admitted around a belch.

“But then, I forgot that you were back in Libby’s room while I was finishing up the interview with Gayle Corrington,” Stryker said suddenly. “Hell, you missed out on what I considered the most significant and intriguing part of her story. Let me read this off to you.” He fumbled for his notepad.

Mandarin had had enough of hauntings for the day. “Let me have you fill me in later,” he begged off. “I’ve got an evening clinic tonight, and I’d like to run back to the house beforehand and get packed.”

“Going out of town?”

“I need to see my high-priced lawyers in New York tomorrow.”

“That’s right. How’s that look?”

Russ frowned, said with more confidence than he felt: “I think we’ll make our case. Police just can’t burglarize a physician’s confidential files in order to get evidence for a drug bust.”

“Well, I wish you luck,” Stryker allowed. “There’s a few angles I want to check out on this business first, anyway. I’ll probably have the chapter roughed out by the time you’re back in town. Why don’t I give you a carbon then, and let you comment?”

“Fine.” Russ stood up and downed his beer. “Can I give you a lift somewhere?”

“Thanks — but I’ve got my car parked just down the block. You take it easy driving back though.”

Russ grinned. “Sure. Take it easy yourself.”

Two nights later Mandarin’s phone woke him up. Stryker hadn’t taken it easy.

Dishevelled and coatless in the misty rain, Mandarin stood glumly beside the broken guardrail. It was past 3 AM. His clothes looked slept in, which they were. He’d continued the cocktail hour that began on his evening flight from New York once he got home. Sometime toward the end of the network movie that he wasn’t really watching he fell asleep on the couch. The set was blank and hissing when he stumbled awake to answer the phone.

“Hello, Russ,” greeted Saunders, puffing up the steep bank from the black lakeshore. His face was grim. “Thought you ought to be called. You’re about as close to him as anyone Stryker had here.”

Mandarin swallowed and nodded thanks. With the back of his hand he wiped the beads of mist and sweat from his face. Below them the wrecker crew and police diver worked to secure cables to the big maroon Buick submerged there. Spotlights, red tail lights burning through the mist. Yellow beacon on the wrecker, blue flashers on the two patrol cars. It washed the brush-grown lakeshore with a flickering nightmarish glow. Contorted shadows wavered around objects made grotesque, unreal. It was like a Daliesque landscape.

“What happened, Ed?” he managed to say.

The police lieutenant wiped mud from his hands. “Nobody saw it. No houses along this stretch, not a lot of traffic this hour of night.”

An ambulance drove up slowly, siren off. Static outbursts of the two-way radios echoed like sick thunder in the silence.

“Couple of kids parked on a side road down by the lake. Thought they heard brakes squeal, then a sort of crashing noise. Not loud enough to make them stop what they were doing, and they’d been hearing cars drive by fast off and on all night. But they remembered it a little later when they drove past here and saw the gap in the guard rail.”

He indicated the snapped-off stumps of the old-style wood post and cable guard rail. “Saw where the brush was smashed down along the bank, and called it in. Investigating officer’s flashlight picked out the rear end plain enough to make out the license number. I was on hand when owner’s identification came in; had you called.”

Russ muttered something. He’d met Saunders a few years before when the other was taking Styker’s evening class in creative writing. The detective had remained a casual friend despite Mandarin’s recent confrontations with the department.

“Any chance Curtiss might have made it?”

Saunders shook his head. “Been better than a couple hours since it happened. If he’d gotten out, he’d’ve hiked it to a house down the road, flagged down a motorist. We’d have heard.”

Someone called out from the shore below, and the wrecker’s winch began to rattle. Russ shivered.

“Rained a little earlier tonight,” Saunders went on. “Enough to make this old blacktop slick as greased glass. Likely, Curtiss had been visiting some friends. Had maybe a few drinks more than he should have — you know how he liked gin in hot weather. Misjudged his speed on these slippery curves and piled on over into the lake.”

“Hell, Curtiss could hold his liquor,” Mandarin mumbled. “And he hardly ever pushed that big Buick over 35.”

“Sometimes that’s fast enough.”

The Buick’s back end broke through the lake’s black surface like a monster in a Japanese horror flick. With an obscene gurgle, the rest of the car followed. Lake water gushed from the car body and from the open door on the passenger side.

“OK! Hold it!” someone yelled.

The maroon sedan halted, drowned and streaming, on the brush-covered shore. Workers grouped around it. Two attendants unlimbered a stretcher from the ambulance. Russ wanted to vomit.

“Not inside!” a patrolman called up to them.

The diver pushed back his facemask. “Didn’t see him in there before we started hauling either.”

“Take another look around where he went in,” Saunders advised. “Someone call in and have the Rescue Squad ready to start dragging at daylight.”

“He never would wear his seatbelt,” Russ muttered.

Saunders’ beefy frame shrugged heavily “Don’t guess it would have helped this time. Lake’s deep here along the bluff. May have to wait till the body floats up somewhere.” He set his jaw so tight his teeth grated. “Goddamn it to hell.”

“We don’t know he’s dead for sure.” Russ’s voice held faint hope.

Sloshing and clanking, the Buick floundered up the lakeshore and onto the narrow blacktop. The door was sprung open, evidently by the impact. The front end was badly mauled— grill smashed and hood buckled — from collision with the guard rail and underbrush. Several branches were jammed into the mangled wreckage. A spiderweb spread in ominous pattern across the windshield on the driver’s side.

Russ glowered at the sodden wreck, silently damning it for murdering its driver. Curtiss had always sworn by Buicks — had driven them all his life. Trusted the car. And the wallowing juggernaut had plunged into Fort Loundon Lake like a chrome-trimmed coffin.

Saunders tried the door on the driver’s side. It was jammed. Deep gouges scored the sheet metal on that side.

“What’s the white paint?” Mandarin pointed to the crumpled side panels.

“From the guard rail. He glanced along that post there as he tore through. Goddamn it! Why can’t they put up modern guard rails along these back roads! This didn’t have to happen!”

Death is like that, Russ thought. It never had to happen the way it did. You could always go back over the chain of circumstances leading up to an accident, find so many places where things could have turned out OK. Seemed like the odds were tremendous against everything falling in place for the worst.

“Maybe he got out,” he whispered.

Saunders started to reply, looked at his face, kept silent.

It missed the morning papers, but the afternoon News-Sentinel carried Stryker’s book-jacket portrait and a few paragraphs on page one, a photograph of the wreck and a short continuation of the story on the back page of the first section. And there was a long notice on the obituary page.

Russ grinned crookedly and swallowed the rest of his drink. Mechanically he groped for the Jack Daniel’s bottle and poured another over the remains of his ice cubes. God. Half a dozen errors in the obituary. A man gives his whole life to writing, and the day of his death they can’t even get their information straight on his major books.

The phone was ringing again. Expressionlessly Mandarin caught up the receiver. The first score or so times he’d still hoped he’d hear Curtiss’s voice — probably growling something like: “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Eventually he’d quit hoping.

“Yes. Dr Mandarin speaking.”

(Curtiss had always ribbed him. “Hell, don’t tell them who you are until they tell you who’s calling.”)

“No. They haven’t found him yet.”

(“Hot as it is, he’ll bob up before long,” one of the workers had commented. Saunders had had to keep Russ off the bastard.)

“Yeah. It’s a damn dirty shame. I know how you feel, Mrs Hollister.”

(You always called him a hack behind his back, you bloated bitch.)

“No I can’t say what funeral arrangements will be made.”

(Got to have a body for a funeral, you stupid bitch.)

“I’m sure someone will decide something.”

(Don’t want to be left out of the social event of the season, do you?)

“Well, we all have to bear up somehow, I’m sure.”

(Try cutting your wrists.)

“Uh-huh. Goodbye, Mrs Hollister.”

Jesus! Mandarin pushed the phone aside and downed his drink with a shudder. No more of this!

He groped his way out of his office. That morning he’d cancelled all his appointments; his section of the makeshift clinic was deserted. Faces from the downstairs rooms glanced at him uneasily as he swept down the stairs. Yes, he must look pretty bad.

Summer twilight was cooling the grey pavement furnace of the University section. Russ tugged off his wrinkled necktie, stuffed it into his hip pocket. With the determined stride of someone in a hurry to get someplace, he plodded down the cracked sidewalk. Sweat quickly sheened his blue-black stubbled jaw, beaded his forehead and eyebrows. Damp hair clung to his neck and ears. Dimly he regretted that the crewcut of his college days was no longer fashionable.

Despite his unswerving stride, he had no destination in mind. The ramshackle front of the Yardarm suddenly loomed before him, made him aware of his surroundings. Mandarin paused a moment by the doorway. Subconsciously he’d been thinking how good a cold beer would taste, and his feet had carried him over the familiar route. With a grimace, he turned away. Too many memories haunted the Yardarm.

He walked on. He was on the strip now. Student bars, bookshops, drugstores, clothing shops and other student-oriented businesses. Garish head shops and boutiques poured out echoes of incense and rock music. Gayle Corrington owned a boutique along here, he recalled — he dully wondered which one.

Summer students and others of the University crowd passed along the sidewalks, lounged in doorways. Occasionally someone recognized him and called a greeting. Russ returned a dumb nod, not wavering in his mechanical stride. He didn’t see their faces.

Then someone had hold of his arm.

“Russ! Russ, for God’s sake! Hold up!”

Scowling, he spun around. The smooth-skinned hand anchored to his elbow belonged to Royce Blaine. Mandarin made his face polite as he recognized him. Dr Blaine had been on the medicine house staff during Mandarin’s psychiatric residency Their acquaintance had not died out completely since those days.

“Hello, Royce.”

The internist’s solemn eyes searched his face. “Sorry to bother you at a time like now, Russ,” he apologized. “Just wanted to tell you we were sad to hear about your friend Stryker, Know how good a friend of yours he was.”

Mandarin mumbled something appropriate.

“Funeral arrangements made yet, or are they still looking?”

“Haven’t found him yet.”

His face must have slipped its polite mask. Blame winced. “Yeah? Well, just wanted to let you know we were all sorry. He was working on a new one, wasn’t he?”

“Right. Another book on the occult.”

“Always thought it was tragic when an author left his last book unfinished. Was it as good as his others?”

“I hadn’t seen any of it. I believe all he had were notes and a few chapter roughs.”

“Really a damn shame. Say, Russ — Tina says for me to ask you how about dropping out our way for dinner some night. We don’t see much of you these days — not since you and Alicia used to come out for fish fries.”

“I’ll take you up on that some night,” Russ temporized.

“This week maybe?” Blaine persisted. “How about Friday?”

“Sure. That’d be fine.”

“Friday, then. 6:30, say. Time for a happy hour.”

Mandarin nodded and smiled thinly. Blaine squeezed his shoulder, gave him a sympathetic face, and scurried off down the sidewalk. Mandarin resumed his walk.

The hot afternoon sun was in decline, throwing long shadows past the mismatched storefronts and deteriorating houses. Russ was dimly aware that his feet were carrying him along the familiar path to Stryker’s office. Did he want to walk past there? Probably not — but he felt too apathetic to redirect his course.

The sun was behind the old drugstore whose second floor housed a number of small businesses, and the dirty windows of Stryker’s office lay in shadow. Behind their uncurtained panes, a light was burning.

Mandarin frowned uncertainly. Curtiss never left his lights on. He had an obsession about wasting electricity.

Leaning heavily on the weathered railing, Russ climbed the outside stairway that gave access to the second floor. Above, a dusty hallway led down the center of the building. Several doorways opened off either side. A tailor, a leathershop, several student-owned businesses — which might or might not reopen with the fall term. Only Frank the Tailor was open for the summer, and he took Mondays off.

Dust and silence and the stale smell of disused rooms. Stryker’s office was one of the two which fronted the street. It was silent as the rest of the hallway of locked doors, but light leaked through the not-quite-closed doorway.

Mandarin started to knock, then noticed the scars on the door jamb where the lock had been forced. His descending fist shoved the door open.

Curtiss’s chair was empty. No one sat behind the scarred desk with its battered typewriter.

Russ glanced around the barren room with its cracked plaster and book-laden, mismatched furniture. Anger drove a curse to his lips.

Stryker’s office had always been in total disorder; now it looked like it had been stirred with a stick. Whoever had ransacked the office had done a thorough job.

Through the Yardarm jukebox Johnny Cash was singing “Ring of Fire” for maybe the tenth time that evening. Some of those patrons who had hung around since nightfall were beginning to notice.

Ed Saunders hauled his hairy arms out of the sleeves of his ill-fitting suitcoat, slung the damp garment over the vacant chair beside him. He leaned over the beer-smeared table, truculently intent, like a linebacker in a defensive huddle.

“It still looks completely routine to me, Russ,” he concluded. Mandarin poked a finger through the pile of cold, greasy pizza crusts, singing an almost inaudible chorus of “down, down, down, in a burnin’ ring of far…” A belch broke off his monotone, and he mechanically fumbled through the litter of green Rolling Rock bottles for one that had a swallow left. Blackie the bartender was off tonight, and his stand-in had no conception of how to heat a frozen pizza. Mandarin’s throat still tasted sour, and he felt certain a bad case of heartburn was building up.

The bottles all seemed empty. He waved for two more, still not replying to Saunder’s assertion. A wavy-haired girl, braless in a tanktop, carried the beers over to them — glanced suspiciously at Saunders while she made change. Mandarin slid the coins across the rough boards and eyed the jukebox speculatively.

The city detective sighed. “Look, Russ — why don’t you let Johnny Cash catch his breath, what do you say?”

Russ grinned crookedly and turned to his beer. “But it wasn’t routine,” he pronounced, tipping back the bottle. His eyes were suddenly clear.

Saunders made an exasperated gesture. “You know, Russ, we got God knows how many break-ins a week in this neighborhood. I talked to the investigating officer before I came down. He handled it OK.”

“Handled it like a routine break-in — which it wasn’t,” Mandarin doggedly pointed out.

The lieutenant pursed his lips and reached for the other beer — his second against Mandarin’s tenth. Maybe, he mused, it was pointless to trot down here in response to Mandarin’s insistent phone call. But he liked the psychiatrist, understood the hell of his mood. Both of them had known Curtiss Stryker as a friend.

He began again. “By our records, two of the other shops on that floor have been broken into since spring. It goes on all the time around here — I don’t have to tell you about this neighborhood. You got a black slum just a few blocks away, winos and bums squatting in all these empty houses here that ought to be torn down. Then there’s all these other old dumps, rented out full of hippies and junkies and God knows what. Hell, Russ — you know how bad it is. That clinic of yours — we have to just about keep a patrol car parked in front all night to keep the junkies from busting in — and then the men have to watch sharp or they’ll lose their hubcaps just sitting there.”

Mandarin reflected that the cessation of break-ins was more likely due to the all-night talking point now run by university volunteers at the community clinic — and that the patrol car seemed more interested in observing callers for potential dope busts than in discouraging prowlers. Instead, he said: “That’s my point, Ed. Routine break-ins follow a routine pattern. Rip off a TV, stereo, small stuff that can easily be converted into cash. Maybe booze or drugs, if any’s around. Petty theft.

“Doesn’t hold for whoever hit Stryker’s office. Hell, he never kept anything around there to attract a burglar.”

“So the burglar made a mistake. After all, he couldn’t know what was there until he looked.”

Russ shook his head. “Then he would have taken the typewriter — beat up as it is — or finished the half bottle of Gallo sherry Curtiss had on the shelf. Doubt if he would have recognized any of his books as worth stealing, but at least he would have taken something for his trouble.”

“Probably knew the stuff wasn’t worth the risk of carrying off,” the detective pointed out. “Left it to try somewhere else. Looked like the door on the leathershop was jimmied, though we haven’t contacted the guy who leases it. It’s a standard pattern, Russ. Thief works down a hallway room by room until he gets enough or someone scares him off. Probably started at Stryker’s office, gave it up and was working on another door when he got scared off.”

“Ed, I know Curtiss’s office as well as I know my own. Every book in that place had been picked up and set down again. Someone must have spent an hour at it. Everything had been gone through.”

“Well, I’ve been up in his office before, too,” Saunders recalled, “and I’d be surprised if anyone could remember what kind of order he kept his stuff in — if there was any order I don’t know — maybe the thief was up on his rare books. Say he was scanning title pages for first editions or something.”

“Then he passed up a nice copy of Lovecraft’s The Outsider that would have brought him a couple hundred bucks.”

“Did he? I never heard of it. I meant stuff like Hemingway and all— things you’d likely know were valuable. Or maybe he was just checking for money. Lot of people keep maybe ten or twenty dollars lying around the office for emergencies — stuck back in a drawer, behind a picture, inside a book or something.”

Mandarin snorted and finished his beer. He signalled for two more despite the other’s protest.

“Look, Russ,” Saunders argued gently, “why are you making such a big thing out of this? So far as we can tell, nothing was taken. Just a simple case of break and enter — thief looks the place over a bit, then gives up and moves on. It’s routine.”

“No, it isn’t.” Mandarin’s thin face was stubborn. “And something was missing. The place was too neat, that’s the conclusion. Usually Curtiss had the place littered with notes, pieces of clippings, pages of manuscript, wadded-up rough drafts — you’ve seen how it is. Now his desk is clean, stuff’s been picked up off the floor and shelves. All of it gone — even his wastebaskets!”

“Do you want to report a stolen wastebasket, Russ?” Saunders asked tiredly.

“Goddamn it all, can’t you put it together? Somebody broke into Curtiss’s office, spent a good deal of time gathering up all of his notes and pages of manuscript — all of it, even the scrap paper — then piled it into the wastebasket and walked out. Who’d stop a man who was walking down the alley with a wastebasket full of paper?”

Saunders decided he’d have that third beer — if for no better reason than to keep the psychiatrist from downing it. “Russ, it seems to me you’re ignoring the obvious. Look, you’ve been gone for a few days, right? Now isn’t it pretty’ likely that Curtiss just decided to tidy the place up? So he goes through all his stuff, reorganizes things, dumps all his scrap paper and old notes into the wastebasket, sets the wastebasket out to be picked up, and takes the stuff he’s working on for the moment on home with him.”

“That place hasn’t been straightened out in years — since the fire inspectors got on his ass.”

“So he figured it was high time. Then later some punk breaks in, sees there’s nothing there for him, moves on. Why not, Russ?”

Mandarin seemed to subside. “Just doesn’t feel right to me, is all,” he muttered.

“So why would somebody steal Curtiss’s scrap paper, can you tell me?”

Mandarin scowled at his beer.

“Morbid souvenir hunters? Spies trying to intercept secret information? Maybe it was ghosts trying to recover forbidden secrets? Hell, Russ— you’ve been reading too many of Stryker’s old thrillers.”

“Look, I don’t know the motives or the logic involved,” Russ admitted grandiosely. “That’s why I say it isn’t routine.”

The detective rolled his eyes and gave it up. “All right, Russ. I can’t go along with your half-assed logic, but I’ll make sure the department checks into this to the best of our ability. Good enough?”

“Good enough.”

Saunders grunted and glanced at his watch. “Look, Russ. I got to make a phone call before I forget. What do you say you wait around and after I get through I’ll run you on back to your place?”

“My car’s just over at the clinic.”

“Are you sure…”

“Hell, I can drive. Few beers don’t amount to anything.”

“Well, wait here a minute for me,” urged Saunders, deciding to argue it later. He lifted his sweaty bulk from the chair’s sticky vinyl and made for the pay phone in the rear of the bar.

Mandarin swore sourly and began to stuff the rinds of pizza crust into one of the empty bottles. Heartburn, for sure. He supposed he ought to get headed home.

“Well, well, well. Dr Mandarin, I presume. This is a coincidence. Holding office hours here now, Doctor?”

Russ glowered upward. A grinning face leaned over the table. Russ continued to glower.

Natty in double-knit slacks and sportshirt, Brooke Hamilton dropped onto Saunder’s vacated chair. “Rather thought I’d find you here, actually,” he confided. “Believe you and the old man used to drop by here regularly, right?”

Hamilton was drinking beer in a frosted mug. It made an icy puddle on the cigarette-scarred tabletop. Mandarin had a private opinion of people who drank beer in frosted mugs.

“Really a shock hearing about old Stryker,” Hamilton went on. “Really too bad — though I’m sure a man like Stryker never would have wanted to die in bed. A man of action, old Curtiss. A living legend now passed on to the realm of legends. Yes, we’re all going to miss the old man. Not many of the old pulp greats left around. Well, sic transit.” He made a toast.

Mandarin did not join him. He had met Hamilton at various cocktail parties and writers’ symposiums around the University. He was quite popular in some circles — taught creative writing, edited several “little magazines” and writers’ projects, was prominent at gatherings of regional writers and camp followers. His own writing consisted of several startlingly bad novels published by various local presses — often after Hamilton had cornered their editors at some cocktail affair.

Stryker had loathed him — calling him at one such gathering an ingratiating, self-serving, conceited phoney. Hamilton had been within earshot, but chose not to hear. Their admiration was mutual. Since Hamilton was in the habit of referring to Stryker as an over-the-hill pulp hack, Mandarin was not moved by the man’s show of grief.

“Where’s the funeral, Dr Mandarin — or do you know?”

Mandarin shook his head, measuring the distance to the other man’s Kirk Douglas chin. “No body found yet,” he said.

“Well, I suppose they’ll have some sort of memorial service before long, whatever. Give the writers’ community opportunity to pay our last respects to the old man. Professor Kettering has asked me to act as spokesman for the University. A little tribute for the school paper, and I suppose I’ll say a few words at the memorial service. Old Stryker is going to be missed by those of us who carry on.”

“I’m sure.”

“Thought I might get you to fill me in on a few details of his career, if you don’t mind. After all, you saw a lot of the old man here in his last years.” Hamilton glanced pointedly at the litter of beer bottles. “But I can catch you another time.”

Mandarin grunted noncommittally.

“One thing I did want to ask though. Has old Stryker finished that last book he was working on?”

“No, he was still working on it last time I saw him.”

“Oh, you don’t think he did. Christ, isn’t it tragic to think of all the unfinished work his pen will never take up again. And just when Stryker was as popular with readers as he ever was in the golden age of the pulps.”

“Damn shame.”

Hamilton nodded gravely. “Yes, it is a shame. You know, I was over at the Frostfire Press this morning, talking with Morris Sheldon about it. Christ, they’ re all so down about it over there. But we got to talking, and Morris suddenly came out and said: ‘Brooke, how’d you like to edit a memorial volume for old Stryker? ’ You know, sort of an anthology of his best stuff, and I’d write the introduction — a short biography and criticism of his work. Well, I told him I’d be honored to do it for old Stryker, maybe even edit a few of his last, unfinished works for publication.

“Well, this started Morris thinking still further, and all of a sudden he came out and said: ‘Brooke, there’s no reason Stryker’s public has to be deprived of these last few masterworks. He always made extensive notes, and you were always close to him as a writer and friend…”

“You son of a bitch.”

“How’s that?”

“You ass-kissing, cock-sucking son of a bitch.” Mandarin’s voice was thick with rage.

Hamilton drew himself up. “Now hold it there, Mandarin.” In his egotism it had not occurred to him that Mandarin might resent his assumption of role as Stryker’s literary heir. But he was confident of his ability to destroy the other man in any verbal duel — his wit, termed variously “acid” or “rapier,” had dazzled his fans at many a social function.

Heads were turning, as both men came to their feet in an angry crouch.

“You ass-licking fake! You couldn’t write your name and phone number on a shithouse wall! And after all the snotty condescension you had for Stryker, you’re stealing his name and his work before his grave’s even been spaded!”

“I don’t have to take that — even from a drunk! ” Hamilton snarled. “Although I understand I’m not likely to ever find you sober.”

The distance to his movie-star chin had already been noted. Mandarin reached across the table, put a fist there.

Hamilton sat down, hard. The rickety chair cracked under him. Arms flailing, he hit the floor in a tangle of splintered wood. The beer stein smashed against the dirty concrete.

Anger burned the dazed look from his eyes. Accustomed to urbane exchanges of insults at cocktail parties and catfights, Hamilton had not expected the manners of a barroom brawl. “You goddamn drunk!” he spat, struggling to rise.

Mandarin, who before medical school had spent a lot of Saturday nights in Montana saloons, was not a gentleman. He waited until Hamilton had risen halfway from the wreckage of his chair, then put another straight right to his chin. Hamilton went down again.

The writer shook the stars from his head and came up frothing mad. He was only five years or so older than Mandarin and of approximate physical size. Regular workouts at the faculty health club had hardened his body into the finely tuned fighting machine of the heroes of his novels. Now he discarded his initial intent of dispatching his drunken opponent with a few precisely devastating karate blows.

The beer stein had shattered with a jagged chunk still attached to its handle. Hamilton rolled to his feet, gripping the handle in his fist like a pair of brass knuckles.

Mandarin, unhappy that he had not had more on his punches, cleared the end of the table with no apparent intention of helping the other man to his feet. Hamilton’s fist with its jagged knuckleduster slashed at his face.

Rolling under the punch, Russ blocked Hamilton’s arm aside and threw a shoulder into his chest. They smashed to the floor, Mandarin on top with a knee planted in the other man’s belly.

Breath whooshed from the writer’s lips as his head cracked against the floor. Mandarin took the broken stein away from him, grinned down at his pinned opponent. Hamilton gave a hoarse bleat of fear.

“Jesus H. Christ! Russ, stop it!”

Saunders shouldered through the crowd, caught Russ’s arm in a shovel fist, hauled the two men apart. His interference was booed.

Groggily, Hamilton came to his feet, his face astonishingly pale. He glared at Mandarin, struggling to break away from the burly detective, decided not to risk a punch against him.

“Call the police!” he said shakily. “This man attacked me!”

“I’m a policeman, buddy!” Saunders growled. “What I saw was this man disarming you after you tried to jam a busted bottle in his face! Want to take out a warrant?”

The writer composed himself, massaging his bruised chin. “A policeman? Yes, I believe I recognize you now. One of the late Curtiss Stryker’s night school proteges, I recall. No doubt you learned more effective ways of writing parking tickets, officer — although it’s always encouraging to see one of your sort trying to improve his mind.”

“Ask him if he’s stolen any good wastebaskets lately,” Mandarin suggested, wriggling out of the detective’s grasp.

“Very clever, aren’t we,” Hamilton sneered. “I wonder what the state medical association will say about an alcoholic psychiatrist who gets into barroom brawls?”

“I wonder what the English department will say about faggot faculty members who try to chop a man’s face up with a busted beer stein?” Saunders wondered.

Hamilton brushed himself off, his smile supercilious. “Well, I can see there’s no point taking out a warrant when the arresting officer is a personal friend of the guilty party.”

He turned to the onlookers. “You see the kind of police protection our community enjoys. I leave you to judge!”

“Hit him again, Doc!” Someone yelled from across the bar.

“We’ll keep the pig from pulling you off before you’re finished!”

Hamilton’s face turned pale again.

“I think you’d better get going,” Saunders warned. “Russ, get back here!”

“We shall, of course, take this up again when we aren’t immersed in the rabble,” Hamilton promised, moving for the door.

“Oh, to be sure!” Mandarin mimicked.

The writer swept out the door to a chorus of catcalls.

“OK, what started that! ” Saunders demanded, picking up his coat.

The wavy-haired barmaid had brought Mandarin another beer. He was toasting her with a pleased expression on his stubbled face. Despite his annoyance, Saunders reflected that it was the first smile he’d seen from the psychiatrist since the accident.

“That son of a bitch Hamilton, “ Mandarin informed him, “that piece of shit — he’s talked Stryker’s publisher here into letting him edit Curtiss’s last work — do a memorial volume and shit like that! Hell, you know how he and Curtiss felt about each other. Ed, get your fingerprint men up to Stryker’s office. You’ll find Hamilton’s sticky little fingers were all over the place.”

“Let’s not get started on that one again,” Saunders told him wearily.

“Bet you dollars to dogshit, and you can hold the stakes in your mouth.”

“Come on, Russ. I’ll drop you off.”

Protesting, Mandarin let himself be led away.

“What’s the matter?”

Mandarin had paused with his hand on the door of Saunders’ Ford. He stared out across the parking lot. “Somebody’s following us. Just saw his shadow duck behind that old VW van. If it’s that son of a bitch Hamilton looking for more trouble…”

Saunders followed Mandarin’s gaze, saw nothing. “Oh hell, get in, Russ! Jesus, you’re starting to sound paranoid!”

“There’s somebody there,” Russ insisted. “Followed us from the Yardarm.”

“Some damn hippy afraid of a bust,” Saunders scoffed. “Will you just get in!”

His expression wounded, Mandarin complied.

Backing the Ford out of the parking place, Saunders turned down Forest Avenue. Mandarin took a last swig from the Rolling Rock he had carried with him from the bar, then struck his arm out and fired the green bottle in the general direction of his imagined skulker. From the darkness came the rattle of breaking glass. “Ka-pow!” echoed Russ.

Saunders winced and drove on in silence.

“Hey, you went past the clinic,” Russ protested several blocks later.

“Look, I’ll run you back down in the morning.”

“I can drive OK.”

“Will you let me do this as a favor?” Saunders asked, not making it clear whose favor he meant it to be.

Mandarin sighed and shrugged. “Home, James.”

Pressing his lips tightly, the detective turned onto Kingston Pike. After a while he said: “You know, Russ, there’s several on the force who’d really like to put your ass in a sling. Drunken driving is a really tough charge.”

When Mandarin started to argue, Saunders shouted him down. “Look, Russ. I know this is rough on you. It is on all of us who knew Curtiss. But damn it, this isn’t going to make it any better for you. I thought you finally learned that for yourself after Alicia…”

“Goddamn it, Ed! Don’t you start lecturing me now!”

“OK, Russ,” his friend subsided, remembering the hell Mandarin had gone through three years before. “Just wanted to remind you that you’d tried this blind alley once before.”

“Ed, I drink only socially these days.” He waited for the other to say something, finally added: “Except for an occasional binge, maybe.”

“Just trying to make a friendly suggestion.”

“Well, I can do without friendly suggestions.”

“OK, Russ.”

They drove the rest of the way in silence. Saunders expected the psychiatrist to drop off, but the other sat rigidly upright all the way. Too much adrenaline, Saunders decided.

He pulled into the long driveway of Mandarin’s Cherokee Hills estate. It was a rambling Tudor-style house of the 1920s, constructed when this had been the snob residential section of Knoxville. Although most of the new money had now moved into the suburbs, Cherokee Hills had resisted urban decay with stately aloofness.

“I’ll give you a ring in the morning,” Saunders promised.

“It’s all right; I’ll call a cab,” muttered Russ.

Saunders shrugged. “Good night, Russ.”

He climbed out of the car. “Sure.”

Saunders waited until he was in the front door before driving off.

The phone started to ring while Russ was dropping Alka-Seltzers into a highball glass. Holding the frothing glass carefully, he picked up the receiver.

“Hello.” He wondered if he could finish the conversation before the tablets finished their dancing disintegration.

“Dr Mandarin?”

“Speaking.” He didn’t recognize the voice.

“This is Morris Sheldon from the Frostfire Press. Been trying to get in touch with you this evening.”

“Yeah? Well, what can I do for you, Morris old buddy?”

“Well, I know you were close to poor Curtiss Stryker. I believe he mentioned to me that you were giving him some medical opinions relative to the research he was doing on this last book.”

“I was,” Russ acknowledged, taking time for a swallow of Alka-Seltzer.

“Do you know how far along he’d gotten before the accident?”

“Well now, you probably know better than I. All I’d seen were several of the early chapters.”

“I’d wondered if you perhaps had seen the rough draft of the chapters you were involved in.”

“The poltergeist house? No, didn’t know he’d had time to put that in rough draft yet.”

“Yes, he had. At least he said so in our last conversation.”

“Well, that’s news to me. I was out of town the last couple days.” Mandarin downed the last of the seltzer. “Why do you ask?”

Sheldon paused. “Well, frankly I’d hoped Curtiss might have passed a carbon of it on to you. He didn’t send me the typescript. And we’re rather afraid it was with his papers when the accident occurred. If so, I’m afraid his last chapter has been lost forever.”

“Probably so,” Russ agreed, his voice carefully civil. “But why are you concerned?”

“Well, as a friend of Curtiss’s you’ll be glad to know that Frostfire Press had decided not to let his last book go unfinished. We’ve approached his close friend and colleague, Brooke Hamilton…”

“Oh,” said Mandarin, revelation dawning in his voice. “Hey, you mean his confidant and bosom pal, Brooke Hamilton, hopes to use Stryker’s notes and all for a posthumous collaboration?”

“That’s right,” Sheldon agreed. “And naturally we want to locate as much of Stryker’s material as we can.”

“Well, then you’re in luck, Morris old buddy. Stryker’s dear friend, that critically acclaimed writer and all around bon vivant, Brooke Hamilton, was so overcome with grief at his mentor’s death that he wasted no time in breaking into Stryker’s office and stealing every shred of Stryker’s unpublished writing. Just give him time to sort through the wastebasket, and dear old Brooke will keep you in posthumous collaborations for the next ten years.”

“Now wait, Dr Mandarin! You mean you’re accusing Brooke Hamilton of…”

“Of following his natural talents. And may the pair of you be buggered in hell by ghouls! Good night, Morris old buddy.”

He slammed the receiver over Sheldon’s rejoinder, and swore for a while.

Returning to the sink, he carefully rinsed his glass, then added a few ice cubes. There was bourbon in the decanter.

Sipping his drink, he collapsed on the den couch and glared at the silent television screen. He didn’t feel like watching the idiot tube tonight. Nor did he care to go to bed, despite extended lack of sleep. His belly felt sour, his head ached. He was too damn mad and disgusted to relax.

Ghouls. All of them. Gathering for the feast. More Haunted Houses of the South, by Curtiss Stryker and Brooke Hamilton. Probably they’d already approached Stryker’s agent, set up a contract. Stryker would spin in his grave. If he ever reached his grave.

Mandarin wondered if he ought to phone Stryker’s agent and protest — then remembered that he had no idea who his agent had been. No, make that was, not had been. As a literary property, Curtiss Stryker was suddenly more alive than before.

Sheldon would know who the agent was. Maybe he should phone and ask. Russ discarded the idea. Who was he to protest, anyway? Just another obnoxious “friend of the deceased.”

His thoughts turned to Stryker’s unfinished book, to the missing last chapter. Curtiss had promised to give him the carbon. Probably Hamilton had made off with that along with his other tomb spoils.

Maybe not.

Stryker kept a file of all his more recent manuscripts. A big filing cabinet in his study at home. Sometimes he worked there at night — when he was pushed by a deadline, or really caught up in something.

Russ hauled himself to his feet. A picture was taking shape. Stryker, due at a friend’s home for dinner, knowing he wouldn’t be back until late. But too interested in his new chapter to leave the material in his office. Instead he brings his notes home and works on the manuscript until time to leave. Had anyone thought to check his study?

Someone would soon — if they hadn’t already. Climbing the stairs to his bedroom, Russ fumbled through his dresser. There it was — in a box crammed mostly with cufflinks, tie-tacs and spare keys. The key to his house that Stryker had given him once when the author left for several months knocking about Mexico.

A look of angry resolve on his black-stubbled jaw, Mandarin snatched up the key and stalked to the garage. The battery was low in the old GTO that he’d kept because it had been Alicia’s favorite car, but the engine caught at the last moment. With an echo of throaty exhaust, he backed out of the garage.

His plans were only half formulated, as he carefully steered the rumbling Pontiac through the downtown streets. He meant to check Stryker’s study immediately, however. If the chapter manuscripts were there, he’d take it to read, and Brooke Hamilton could go to hell. And if he didn’t find the manuscript— maybe that would be because somebody had already broken into the house. A horrid grin twisted Mandarin’s face. He’d like for that to be the case. Like to show the evidence to Saunders, place charges against Brooke Hamilton for stealing from a dead man.

It was past 11, and traffic was thinning out — for which Russ was grateful. With far more caution than was his custom, he overcame his impatience and made the short drive out Lyons View Pike without mishap.

He turned into the empty drive and cut his lights. Stryker’s house, an old brick farmhouse laid out in a T, hunched dark beneath huge white pines. The windows were black against the brick from the front; the remainder of the house was shadowed by the looming pines from what little moonlight the clouds hadn’t kept.

Mandarin remembered a flashlight in the glove compartment and dug it out. The beam was yellow and weak, but enough to see by. Suspiciously he played the light across the front of the house. Seeing nothing untoward, he started around back.

The front of the house was two storeys and contained living quarters. Like the stem of a T, the rear section came out perpendicularly from the rest — a single-storey wing that housed kitchen and storage. A side porch came off from one side of the kitchen wing, where Stryker and Russ had spent many a summer evening, slouched in wooden rockers and with something cold to drink.

Having seen nothing out of the ordinary, Russ crossed the unscreened porch to the kitchen door, jabbed his key at the lock. As he fumbled for the knob, the door nudged open.

Mandarin brought up his flashlight. The old-fashioned latch had been forced.

He breathed a silent curse. Stealthily he pushed open the door, stepped inside.

Thunder spat flame from across the room. Russ pitched backward onto the porch, and the flame burst across his skull.

She was the most beautiful, and at the same time the most frightening, woman Mandarin had ever seen. She danced in a whirl of blue, how could his heart forget? Blue were the skies, and blue were her eyes, just like the blue skirt she wore…

And she whispered to him as she waltzed, and the things she whispered to him were beautiful, and Mandarin wanted to hear more, even though her whispers terrified him.

And the more she danced and whispered and sang, the worse his vertigo became, and he was dizzy and falling, and he was clutching at her blue skirt to keep from falling, and she kept dancing away from him, and he cried out to her to come back…

He didn’t understand…

But he had to understand…

“Come back!” he screamed. His voice was a tortured rasp.

The blue light became a lance of blue flame, searing his brain. And her hands of coldest ice pierced through him and seized upon his soul, and the blue lady was drawing him away, pulling him through the darkness…

Dimly, through the haze of throbbing pain, Mandarin became aware of the man bending over him.

Gritting his teeth, he forced his eyes to focus. It was hard. A bright beam of light bored into his face.

“Christ! He’s coming around, Sid!”

The light swept away.

Mandarin struggled to rise — groaned and fell back. Bright flashes of pain rippled from the numbing ache of his skull.

“Just stay put, buddy. Jesus! We thought you were…”

Russ’s vision was clearing. Blotchy green afterimages swam across his eyes. But he saw the patrolman’s uniform, and the rising wave of panic subsided.

“Neighbor says she knows who he is, Hardin.” The other voice drifted from farther away. “He’s a friend of the guy who owned this place. Drops by every week or so.”

Russ dully recognized the floor of Stryker’s side porch spread out around him. It was damp and sticky. He could hear a woman’s voice speaking from the kitchen, though he couldn’t follow her words.

“I think the bullet must’ve just grazed the top his forehead,” the first man called out. “There’s blood all over the back of his head, but it looks like he just busted his scalp open falling back against the post here. You’re one lucky hard-headed bastard, buddy.”

His partner was examining Russ’s billfold. “Name’s Dr Russell Mandarin. He’s that shrink friend of Lieutenant Saunders, I think. Hope that’s the ambulance I hear coming. He’s been out a damn long time.”

“I’m all right,” protested Mandarin without conviction. He tried again to rise, made it to his knees. The porch seemed to whirl and pitch. He shut his eyes hard and waited.

An arm steadied his shoulder. “Maybe you better stay down, buddy. You got blood leaking all across the back of your head.” Doggedly Mandarin got his feet under him, lurched onto a porch rocker. The chair almost tipped, then steadied. With careful fingers he touched his forehead, found pain there. His hair was clotted with blood. Squinting across the narrow porch, Russ saw the support post opposite the back door. He remembered a gunshot, and falling backward. He must have bashed his head against the oak pillar.

“Dr Mandarin? Are you all right?”

Russ recognized Mrs Lieberman, Stryker’s closest neighbor. Russ had often kidded Stryker that the widow had designs on him, and Stryker would always reply that only a cad tells.

“I heard that loud old car of yours turn into Mr Stryker’s driveway,” she was saying. “And then I heard a shot. I thought it must be a gang of burglars, and so I called the police.”

“And it’s good you did, ma’am. They might have finished the job on your friend here otherwise.”

The one called Hardin looked down the driveway. “Here’s the ambulance — and our back-up, now that we don’t need it.”

“I think I heard them miss the turn-off twice,” his partner replied.

“What’s happening?” Mandarin asked, recovering enough to become aware of his situation.

“You been shot, Doc, but you’re going to be all right now.”

“Shot?”

“Reckon you busted in on whoever it was that’d broke into the house. Can’t see that anything’s taken, but the place is sure a mess.”

Saunders was waiting for him when Mandarin got out of x-ray. Russ had insisted on viewing the films himself, after making enough of a scene that the radiologist seemed a little disappointed to find no evidence of fracture or subdural. Russ let them wheel him back down to the ER, where a nervous resident began to patch him up.

“I am goddamn glad to see you here,” was Saunders’ first comment.

“Same to you, sideways,” Russ said. “Did you know those two clowns of yours had radioed me in as DOA? Damn lucky I didn’t bleed out waiting.”

“Damn lucky you got a thick skull and a hippie haircut. Somebody bounced a bullet off your head, and if they’d aimed an inch or so lower, it’d’ve gone between your eyes instead of parting your hair. I hear you busted loose a porch rail banging it with your head afterward.”

“Nothing much hurt but my good looks,” Russ allowed. “They want to keep me overnight for observation, but I’m heading home from here. I can damn well observe myself — no point in being a doctor if you can’t change your own oil. And don’t tell me the one about ‘… has a fool for a physician.’”

Saunders was serious now. Too serious.

“Russ, I’m going to tell you that the only reason you’re not headed from here to the station is because you were lying there DOA on Stryker’s porch at the same time Brooke Hamilton was being murdered.”

Mandarin decided he was still suffering the effects of his concussion. “What’s that about Hamilton?”

Saunders was looking for a cigarette, then remembered he couldn’t smoke here. “Just came from his place. A boyfriend let himself in around midnight, found Hamilton tied to a chair, throat had just been cut. And he’d been cut up pretty good elsewhere before he got his second smile. After that business this afternoon, I was afraid it was you I’d be bringing in. I was at your house when word came in that you were dead at the time of the murder. Reckon we’ll hold his boyfriend now instead.”

“Jesus!” Russ muttered. It was all coming too fast for him. “These queers do some weird shit when they have their love spats,” Saunders informed him. “Likely high on pot and LSD.”

“I didn’t know Hamilton was gay”

“No? Well, he looked queer. I can spot them. Anyway, if you hadn’t been busy getting shot in the head at Curtiss’s house at the time Hamilton was last seen alive, you’d be in worse trouble now.”

“I think I want to go home.”

“I’ll see that you get there,” Saunders said. “Only this time you stay put.”

“Scout’s honor.” Russ held up three fingers.

Saunders watched him without amusement. “And when you get there, you can help fill out a report. Tell us if anything’s missing.”

“Missing?”

“Somebody’d broke into your house right before we got there.”

Mandarin had a bottle of Percodan tablets for pain — contraindicated, of course, in the presence of recent head injury — and he prescribed himself a couple and washed them down with a medicinal glass of Jack Daniel’s. He supposed he should sue himself for malpractice. After all, he’d only been permitted to leave the hospital after signing an “against medical advice” form. A fool for a physician.

Was it possible for a head to ache any worse than his did? He had a gash above his forehead where the bullet had grazed his scalp, a lump across the back of his skull from his fall, and a terminal hangover. Russ almost wished his assailant had aimed lower. Saunders’ people hadn’t turned up any brass, and Saunders was of the opinion that Russ’s attacker had got off a lucky shot with a junk.22 revolver — probably one of his hippie dope-fiend patients. Typical of the times, Saunders judged, and with our boys dying in Viet Nam while scum like this dodged the draft.

Three break-ins in one night — not to mention the burglary of Stryker’s office the day before — hardly seemed random, Mandarin had argued. Saunders had pointed out that these were only a few of the dozens of break-ins that took place each night, and that it was all due to drugs, and that if certain psychiatrists would stick to shrinking heads and let the police go about their business, a lot of this sort of thing would be stopped.

Russ promised to go to bed.

But neither the Percodan nor the bourbon could ease the pain in his skull. And the thoughts kept running through his brain. And every time he closed his eyes, she was there.

I dream of that night with you

Darling, when first we met…

Mandarin realized that his eyes weren’t closed. She was there. In his room. And she whispered to him…

Mandarin screamed and sat up. His drink, balanced on the back of the couch, fell over and spilled melted ice cubes onto his lap.

The dancing image faded.

Never, thought Mandarin, never mix Percodan and alcohol. He was shaking badly, and his feet seemed to float above the floor as he stumbled into the kitchen for another drink. Maybe he ought to take a couple Valiums. Christ, he was in worse shape now than when Alicia died.

Could a poltergeist direct a bullet?

Russ noticed that he was pouring bourbon over the top of his glass. He gulped down a mouthful, not tasting it. His hands were steadier.

Could a poltergeist direct a bullet?

Either he was succumbing to paranoid fantasies and alcoholic hallucinations, or maybe he should have stayed in the hospital for observation. Was he going over the edge? What the hell— he hadn’t been worth shooting since Alicia died.

Someone thought he was worth shooting.

Could a poltergeist direct a bullet?

Was he haunted?

It wasn’t random; Saunders was wrong. There was a pattern, and it had all started that afternoon when Gayle Corrington told them about her poltergeist. A ghostly lesbian who dabbled in the occult and who liked blue. The stuff of one of Stryker’s pulp thrillers, but now there were two people dead, and someone— or something — had broken into the homes of everyone involved and scattered things about like a vengeful whirlwind.

Mandarin decided that a walk in the early dawn would do him good. He just might be sober by the time he reached the clinic and his car.

Could a poltergeist deflect a bullet?

This one ends on a bright summer morning, and a fresh dew on the roses that perfume the dawn.

Russ Mandarin eased his Jensen Interceptor into the driveway and killed the engine. All at once it seemed absurdly dramatic to him. He really should have phoned Gayle Corrington before driving over to her house at this hour.

Or maybe he shouldn’t have.

He closed the door quietly and walked up to the carport. The white Corvette was parked there as before, only before there hadn’t been a scraping of maroon paint along its scored right front fender. Fiberglass is a bitch to touch up.

Russ tried the doorbell long enough to decide that Gayle Corrington wasn’t going to answer. Either not at home (her car was still there) or a sound sleeper. Russ pounded loudly against the door. After a time his knuckles began to hurt. He stopped and thought about it.

Nothing made sense. Mandarin wished he had a drink — that was always a good answer to any crisis.

He ought to call Saunders, tell him about the maroon paint on Gayle Corrington’s white Corvette, Maybe just a fender-bender, but it might match up with the crease on the left side of Stryker’s Buick, And so what if it did? Curtiss was a terrible driver — he might well have paid Gayle a second visit, scraped up against her car in parking.

Nothing made sense.

Just this: Gayle Corrington had told Stryker something in the course of the interview — while Mandarin had been out of the room. Stryker had been excited about it, had written it into his account of the haunting. And someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make certain that whatever Stryker had discovered would never be published.

Only Gayle Corrington had freely asked Stryker to investigate her haunted house.

Nothing made sense.

Mandarin thought he heard a television set going. Maybe Gayle was around back, catching some early morning sun, and couldn’t hear his knock. Worth trying.

Russ headed toward the rear of the house. As he reached the patio, he saw Prissy lying beside a holly bush. At first he thought the little border collie was asleep.

Not random. A pattern.

The sliding glass door from the patio was curtained and at first glance appeared to be closed. Russ saw that the catch had been forced, and he cautiously slid the glass panel open, stepped inside.

Gayle Corrington was wearing dark slacks and a black sweatshirt. She was hog-tied with her wrists bound back to her ankles, her body arched like a bow upon the couch. Her lips were taped with adhesive, but the cord knotted tightly into her neck would assure that she would never cry out.

Russ stared at her dumbly. He knew there was no point in searching for a pulse.

“Hello, Russ,” said Stryker. “Come on in.”

Russ did as he was told.

Curtiss Stryker was straightening out from where he worked over the brick hearth. The hearth had been lifted away, revealing an opening beneath the floor.

“Used brick hearth on a mountain stone fireplace. Should have tipped me off from the first — an obvious lapse in taste.” Stryker was holding a Colt Woodsman. It was pointed at Mandarin’s heart.

“Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” said Stryker.

“You son of a bitch,” said Mandarin.

“Probably. But you just stand still where you are.”

Russ nodded toward Gayle’s body. “Your work?”

“Yes. While you were ringing. Just not quite in the nick of time, Doctor. But don’t waste any tears on our Mrs Corrington. She tried to kill both of us, after all — and I gather she was certain that you, at least, were most decidedly dead. This is her gun, and she would be disappointed to learn that her aim was not as infallible as she imagined.”

“I don’t get it,” Russ said. “What are you doing?”

Stryker glanced toward the opened hearth. “Just getting a little social security. Maybe you can understand.”

“I don’t understand a goddamned thing! I came here to ask Gayle what it was that she told you while I was out of the room that day. Seems that a lot of people are interested.”

“You might as well know,” Stryker decided. “She wanted me to perform an exorcism.”

“An exorcism?”

“Or something to that effect. She’d read my books on the occult, decided I was a better ghostchaser than a priest would be. Maybe she’d already tried a priest.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Then I’ll make it short and snappy.”

“Is this the point in your story where the villain always explains everything to the hero before he shoots him?”

“It is. I’m afraid this story won’t have a happy ending, though. After all, an author has his privileges.”

“I wept for you.”

“I know. I’ll weep for you.”

Stryker kept the Colt Woodsman steady in the direction of Mandarin’s chest. Russ recalled that Curtiss had always bragged about his marksmanship.

“Our Mrs Corrington changed a few details, and she changed a few names. She played the part of Cass in the highly revised account she gave us of this house. She and her Libby were medical secretaries. They had access to patients’ records, and they knew various prominent citizens who had certain sexual quirks. Knowing their particular weaknesses, it was simple enough to lure them out here for an odd orgy or two— black magic, S&M, any sort of kink their secret selves desired. Then there were the hidden mikes and camera, the two-way mirrors. Made for some lovely footage. Here’s a respected publisher who likes to dress up in women’s clothing and be whipped, here’s a noted doctor who prefers to give enemas to submissive girls. Maybe just a Baptist preacher who can’t get a blow job from his wife. They knew about them, and preyed on them.

“But they needed another girl — another feminine one for their fantasies — delivered orgies. So they brought in a third girl — and that was a crowd. Cass — Gayle — liked her better than Libby, and Libby got jealous. She was going to blow the whistle on the entire operation, unless the other girl was sent away. But that was too dangerous, and Gayle was growing tired of Libby. They had a special black sabbath orgy that night, and when it was over they gave Libby an injection of insulin. Your friend, Dr Royce Blaine, didn’t give any trouble over signing the death certificate; after all, he was in the photos. Later, when Gayle grew tired of Tina, she married Dr Blaine — probably saved her life; his too, maybe.”

“But why did Mrs Corrington call you in on this?” Russ wondered if he could jump the older man.

“Because she really did think she was being haunted. Nothing more than a nuisance, but it preyed on her nerves. So she made up this plausible story, and she reckoned I’d perform some magical miracle, just like the heroes in my stories. But she didn’t reckon on how good a researcher I was. I got suspicious — you know: ‘Doctor, I have this friend…’ and it didn’t take long to dig out the facts. It happened while you were off in New York.”

“So then?”

“Well, I wrote down my findings, made a carbon for you, then set out for another talk with Gayle Corrington. Of course, then I didn’t know about the blackmail angle — I just wanted to confront Gayle with the fact that I knew her part in the story was more than just an innocent bystander.

“She followed me after I left her house, ran me off the road into the lake. By then I knew about the blackmail — she was too upset with me to lie convincingly that night — so I thought I’d just lie doggo for a few days and see what happened. I destroyed my notes, but that little bastard Brooke Hamilton beat me to my office and stole your carbon of the chapter rough. I caught up with him last night, made him tell me where he’d hidden everything, then destroyed it all — and that little shit. In the meantime, Gayle knew of my carbons, so she was checking out my house, and afterward yours. You walked in on her at my house, and she thought she’d killed you. That’s two mistakes. You should have seen her expression when she walked in here afterward. Thought she’d seen a real ghost this time.”

“Just Uncle Dudley in a monster suit.”

“Just like one of my old thrillers. No ghosts. Just greed. And a guilty conscience that made ghosts out of chance phenomena.”

“Now what?”

“I take over the racket, that’s all. After a little persuasion, Gayle told me what I already knew — that the films and tapes were all hidden in a little safe here beneath the raised hearth. I’ve got enough on some of our city’s finest and wealthiest to retire in style. I’ll just make an appearance later on today, say I was knocked for a loop by my accident, took a day or two wandering around the lakeside to remember who I was.”

“What about me?”

“Now that does bother me, Russ. I hadn’t counted on your dropping in like this. I think you’ll be the drugged-out killer in the story — the one who conveniently takes his life when he realizes what he’s done.”

“Saunders won’t buy that.”

“Sure he will. You’ve been walking around town with a screw loose ever since your wife died — before that maybe. You were the one who blew her diagnosis when she complained of chronic headaches.”

“I was your friend, Curtiss.”

“Writers don’t have friends. Only deadlines. And cheating publishers. And meddling editors. And carping reviewers. And checks that never come when they’re supposed to come, and are always short when they do come. I’ve scraped along for a living at this damn trade for over forty years, and I’m still living hand to mouth, and I’m just an old hack to my fellow writers. This is my chance to make someone else pay — pay big.”

Stryker steadied the pistol. “Sorry, Russ. I’ll miss you. Hope you can understand.”

The Victrola behind them made a rattle and whir. There was an audible clunk as the heavy tone arm descended.

Stryker looked toward it for an instant. Russ started to go for him. Stryker nailed him through the upper left shoulder with his first shot. Russ collapsed.

I dream of that night with you…

“Going to be a tough job of suicide now,” Mandarin whispered.

“I’ll figure something,” Stryker assured him.

Blue were the skies

And blue were your eyes

Stryker leveled his pistol again. “Very interesting.”

Come back, blue lady, come back

“There are too many dead!” Russ managed. “She’s grown too strong.”

“I never really believed in ghosts,” said Stryker, lining up on Russ’s heart.

Don’t be blue anymore.

There was a sudden scraping at the fireplace behind them.

From its brackets, the Parker shotgun swung away from the stone wall. It seemed to hesitate an instant, then slowly fell to the hearth, stock downward.

Stryker turned to stare at it, open-mouthed in wonder. He was still gaping into its double barrels, looking down into the blackness within, when both shells fired at once.