Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

"Who?"

"Your link with the Technicolor aura. Electricity. Strange reverberations. And quite wonderfully serene, like a ... harp."

"I'm a hysterical flute and Electra's this elegant harp?"

D'Arlene's lazy eyes flicked slightly open. "It was your analogy to begin with, Miss Barr. And quite productive too. I've never had such clear psychic recall. Your gift is not always to see, but to lead others to see."

"I see."

D'Arlene laughed. "You think that is a little gift, and you loathe the little, the little in yourself, the little in other people, which is a much more serious flaw. Little people. But who is the bassoon? Such power, such waste. Such rage, such fear. And the mute rabbit, who only screams in desperation, what instrument does she play? A violin scraping out of tune. And then one last, hysterical high note, quite impressive, quite final."

The woman shook her head, still not causing a flutter among her greige curls. She sat up, putting her feet on the floor as if restoring herself to solid earth.

"I feel better. I hadn't wanted to see that seance again, but I could bear to hear it. I think you got what you wanted, Miss Barr. I think you are a satisfied client, even if you won't know it until later."

"This ... has been fascinating."

D'Arlene Hendrix didn't look at her. She sat hunched over, regarding the wall-to-wall carpet so unworthy of viewing. "It would have been, if it were faked. But it wasn't. Therefore, it's not fascinating, but sad, and you'll find that out later too."

Temple stood, set her empty glass atop the TV and went to the door. D'Arlene seemed too leaden to move, perhaps ever again.

"Oh," she said, like a dreamer remembering one last detail. "I sensed many unseen lives, some not human, but that kind of static is often present in the face of true phenomena. And one thing you must bear in mind, Miss Barr, above all others. I can swear to the veracity of the emotions I channeled, but not to their origin or any action they might have generated. It's the same as on my cases.

"I never quite know whether I'm picking my impressions up from the victim ... or the killer."

Chapter 30

Two, Three . . . Open the Door

By the next day, Temple was beginning to feel like Miss Scarlet from the game of Clue. With each change of locale, she met another of the suspect characters in the larger game of Murder.

Maybe.

She found Professor Mangel under a spreading cottonwood tree on the University of Nevada at Las Vegas campus, where he was addressing two dozen blue-jeaned and jacketed undergraduates Socrates-Style: outdoors.

Temple turned up the collar on her linen blazer and stuffed her hands into pockets meant to be stitched shut (for a better line) until the day they departed for the Goodwill with the rest of the jacket. Not that the daytime temperatures were that cold yet, but the idea was in the air.

So were loftier ideas.

"Psychic, medium, fortune-teller, tea-leaf reader," Mangel was enumerating with dramatic precision. "Actor, arranger, artist.

None of these names directly figures in the deck." He held up a fanned fistful of oversize cards whose beautifully illustrated backs made Temple edge nearer, all the better to see them.

"But the one card that covers them all is... can anyone guess?"

Students buzzed among themselves, but none ventured a suggestion.

Mangel snapped over one card to reveal its face: not some numerical arrangement of diamonds, clubs, hearts or spades, but another elaborate illustration: a robed man of imposing mien.

"The Emperor!" a man's voice sang out.

Mangel smiled and shook his head.

"The Devil!" a tremulous female voice called.

Smiling, Professor Mangel shook his shiny bald head. "Seeing visions is not evil, only exceptional, though all too often in this world the exceptional is mistaken for the evil. Any other guesses?"

His challenge drew a flurry of answers,

"The High Priest" was first.

"No," he chided. "I said this figure encompasses that of the priest."

"Strength," came the next stab in the dark.

Mangel laughed, enjoying himself, enjoying their attempts at an answer.

"The Hanged Man," a long-haired biker-dude at the back yelled out.

"Spoken like a true pessimist," Mangel slung back. "But is the Hanged Man hanging, or are we just looking at him upside down?" Another cryptic smile.

Temple recognized a rare soul: one who loved to teach. Had she been a class member, she would have contributed. In fact, she couldn't help herself; she knew a few major arcana cards of the tarot. "The Fool!"

"Not bad." Mangel pointed to her, pale eyes sparkling behind the crude glitter of impossibly thick lenses. "And a more versatile and potent card than it is usually accounted. For what is the Fool but youthful possibility? And that is always both promising ... and dangerous, as you young people know very well. Well--?"

"Death," suggested a dark male voice that was impossible to trace to its owner.

Temple shivered as she scanned the group, wondering, but the professor laughed like a college-production Falstaff. "Gloomy youth, who can afford to dwell on decay, since it is so far off. So you think . No. Valiantly suggested, but if I let you continue, you'd name the entire arcana.

No." He moved his thumb aside, letting them see the name of the card.

"The Magician," came a thin chorus, with a mutual groan in their voices.

"The Magician," Mangel repeated, well satisfied. He even beamed at the immobile face of the figure fronting the card. "And what is a magician? Don't worry! I won't tax your ingenuity any longer this morning. I will do my job and tell you what you need to know. In fact, I will be an esteemed educator and let someone else tell you what you need to know. Edmund Wilson. You have heard that name, children?"

The silence said otherwise.

Mangel gave one sad "tsk." "An American, after all, ladies and gentlemen. An American pundit, novelist, commentator, only dead a couple of decades ... no bells to be rung, eh? Only sad songs to be sung. Ah, well. Here is what this nobody Wilson said about the function of this very figure, the Magician: 'He has characteristics in common with those of the criminal, of the actor and of the priest' "--Mangel paused, lifting his eyebrows over the thick black line of his glasses frames to ensure that his audience was paying attention--" 'and he enjoys special advantages impossible for these professions. Unlike the criminal, he has nothing to fear from the police; unlike the actor, he can always have the stage to himself; unlike the priest, he need not trouble about questions of faith.

"Are there," a girl in the front row asked, "no women magicians?"

"Few." With a dramatic clap of his hands, Professor Mangel compressed the fanned Tarot cards into one solid deck. The Magician under discussion vanished into the mass. "However, in the practice of the psychic arts the female of the species has always had an edge. A special ear, as it were, for the less seen, the less heard, the less regarded. The less-often believed. Houdini may be regarded as the epitome of the male magician, reenacting symbolic escapes from castration and death. We must also remember that the greatest influence in his life--and death--was his mama. He was tied to her... heartstrings, so that he did not survive her by very long. Perhaps his lifelong quest of the ultra masculine was a flight from the feminine within himself. He was not so much a magician as an escape artist, and his legend still strives to escape the one trick that does in us all. So we have inducted into the annual Halloween Academy of Attractions the usual Recall of Houdini Seance, even here in Las Vegas, where there are many more pertinent ghosts to recall, such as--?"