“Yes, I’m very happy. It’s lovely here. But I must go back now.”
“No, not yet! Bernice, wait—”
“Will you and Daddy come again, Mommy? Promise me you’ll come again. Then the Auras will let me come, too.”
“We’ll come, I promise! Again and again...”
The radiant image vanished.
Mrs. Buckley began to weep softly. The pitiful sound raised Sabina’s ire, as it surely did John’s. It was despicable enough for predatory, conscienceless men like Abraham Vargas to dupe the gullible, but when they resorted to the exploitation of a mother’s yearning for her long-dead child the game was intolerable. The sooner she and John shut down the Unified College of the Attuned Impulses, the better for everyone. If there was even one more manifestation...
There wasn’t. She heard scratchings, the unmistakable sound of the slate pencil writing on a slate. This was followed by yet another protracted silence, broken only by the faintest of scraping and clicking sounds that she couldn’t identify.
Vargas said abruptly, “The spirits have grown restless. All except Angkar are returning now to their resting places in the land beyond the Border. Angkar will leave too, but first he will free me from my bonds, just as one day we will all be freed from our mortal ties—”
The last word was chopped off in a meaty smacking noise and an explosive grunt of pain. The hand holding Sabina’s left hand jerked free. Another smack, then, followed by a brief gurgling moan.
Sabina called out in alarm, “John! Something’s happened to Vargas!”
Other voices rose in frightened confusion. As she freed her right hand from Margaret Buckley’s grasp and stood up, she heard John’s chair scrape backward from the table. It took only scant seconds before his thumbnail scratched a match alight.
In the smoky flare Sabina saw the others rising from their chairs, all except for Vargas. The fake medium, still roped to his armchair, was slumped forward with his chin on his chest, unmoving. John kicked his chair out of the way, carried the upraised match across to the nearest wall sconce. The gas was off; he turned it on and applied the flame. Flickery light burst forth, banishing the darkness.
Outside in the hallway, hands began to beat on the door panel. Annabelle’s voice rose shrilly: “Let me in! I heard a cry from the professor... let me in!”
Dr. Cobb had rushed forward and was bending over Vargas. “Dear Lord, he’s been stabbed! Stabbed in the back!”
15
Quincannon
There were shocked exclamations from the doctor’s wife and Winthrop Buckley, overridden by a shriek from Margaret Buckley. Out of the corner of his eye Quincannon saw the woman swoon in her husband’s arms as he ran to where Sabina stood staring down at the slumped body in the chair. Her expression of startled incredulity matched that of the others in the room. His own, too, no doubt. This was no piece of mediumistic fakery like the other alleged wonders he’d just witnessed. One look at the dagger jutting from the back of Vargas’s neck and the blindly staring eyes made that abundantly clear.
Stabbed, for a fact. And not once but twice. The weapon, whose ornate hilt bore a series of hieroglyphics, had been plunged deep — whether the death blow or a coup de grâce he couldn’t tell. The other, first-struck wound, still oozing blood, showed through a rent in Vargas’s robe lower down, between the shoulder blades.
Ashen-faced, Dr. Cobb was feeling for a pulse in one limp wrist. He shook his head and announced unnecessarily, “Expired.”
“It isn’t possible,” Mrs. Cobb whispered in a stricken voice. “How could he have been stabbed?”
Buckley had lowered his unconscious wife into one of the chairs and was fanning her flushed face with his hand. He said shakily, “How — and by whom? Surely not any of us...”
Quincannon caught Sabina’s eye. She wagged her head to tell him she didn’t know, or couldn’t be sure, what had taken place in those few seconds of darkness.
The psychic assistant, Annabelle, was still beating on the door, clamoring for admittance. Quincannon went to the cabinet. The brass key lay where Vargas had set it down before the séance began; he used it to unlock the door. The woman rushed in from the dark hallway, her eyes wide and fearful. She gave a little moan when she saw Vargas, ran to his side and knelt to peer into his dead face.
When she straightened again her own face looked even more bloodless than before. She said with tremulous outrage, “Which one of you did this?”
“It couldn’t have been one of us,” Dr. Cobb told her. “No one broke the circle until after the professor was stabbed.”
“Then... it must have been a malevolent spirit.”
Malevolent spirit, Quincannon thought sourly. Bah!
“He did perceive antagonistic waves tonight,” Cobb said. “But why would such a spirit—?”
“He made the Auras angry at times. I warned him to be more cautious but he wouldn’t listen.”
Sabina said, “How did he make the Auras angry?”
Annabelle shuddered and shook her head. Then her eyes shifted into a long stare across the room. “The slates,” she said.
“What about the slates?”
“Is there a spirit message? Have you looked?”
Quincannon swung around to the cabinet; the others, except for Margaret Buckley, crowded close behind him. The tied slates were in the center of the stack where Vargas had placed them. He left those two out, undid the knot in his handkerchief, parted the slates and held them up side by side.
Murmurs, and a mildly blasphemous exclamation from Buckley.
In a ghostlike hand beneath the “John Milford” signatures on each, one message upside down and backward as if it were a mirror image of the other, was written: I Angkar destroyed the offensive one.
“Angkar!” Cobb said. “Why would the professor’s guide and guardian turn on him in such a terrible way?”
“The spirits are not mocked,” Annabelle said. “They know wickedness when it is done in their name. Guardian then becomes avenger.”
“Madam, what are you saying?”
“I warned him,” she said again. “He would not listen and now he has paid the price. His torment will continue on the Other Side, until his spirit has been cleansed of all wickedness.”
Quincannon had had all he could stand of this nonsense. He said, “Enough talk and speculation,” in a sharp authoritarian voice that swiveled all heads in his direction. “There will be time for that later. Now there’s work to be done.”
“Quite right,” Cobb agreed. “The police—”
“Not the police, Doctor. Not yet.”
“Here, Mr. Milford, who are you to take charge?”
“The name isn’t Milford, it’s Quincannon. John Quincannon. Of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services.”
Cobb gaped at him. “A detective? You?”
“Two detectives.” He gestured to Sabina at his side. “My partner, Mrs. Carpenter.”
“A woman?” Grace Cobb said. She sounded as shocked as if Sabina had been revealed as a soiled dove.
Sabina, testily: “And why not, pray tell?”
Annabelle, angrily: “Blasphemy! The presence of unbelievers served only to increase the wrath of the spirits.”
Dr. Cobb: “Who hired you? Who brought you here under false pretenses?”
Quincannon and Sabina both looked at Buckley. To the man’s credit, he wasted no time in admitting he was their client.
“You, Winthrop?” Margaret Buckley had revived and was regarding them dazedly. “I don’t understand. Why would you engage detectives?”
Before her husband could reply, Quincannon said, “Mr. Buckley will explain in the parlor. Be so good, all of you, as to go there and wait.”