rises from earth to heaven but avenging lightning finds its walls.
BEYOND the garden wall a row of poplars rustled in the night wind. The moon had not risen; in the gentle darkness the voice was a monotonous, musical ripple, as soothing as the splash of a fountain.
“Your mind is quiet… a lamp in a sheltered corner where the flame does not flicker. Your body is relaxed. Your heart is at peace. Your mind is perfectly clear but at ease. Nothing troubles you. Your mind is a still, calm pool without a ripple…”
The big man had a white scarf knotted around his neck and tucked into his tweed jacket. He let his hands lie easily on the arms of the deck chair; his legs in tawny flannel trousers were propped on the footrest.
Beside him the spiritualist in black was all but invisible under the starlight.
“Close your eyes. When you open them again, stare straight at the garden wall and tell me what you see.”
“It’s faint-” Grindle’s voice was flaccid and dreamy. All the bite had gone out of it.
“Yes?”
“It’s growing clearer. It’s a city. A golden city. Towers. Domes. A beautiful city-and now it’s gone.”
The Rev. Carlisle slipped back into his pocket a “Patent Ghost Thrower, complete with batteries and lenses, to hold 16 millimeter film, $7.98” from a spiritualists’ supply house in Chicago.
“You have seen it-the City of Spiritual Light. My control spirit, Ramakrishna, has directed us to build it. It will be patterned after a similar city-which few outsiders have ever seen -in the mountains of Nepal. I myself was permitted to see it under Ramakrishna’s guidance. I was teleported physically to the spot. I was leaving the church one snowy night last winter when I felt Ramakrishna near me.”
The tycoon’s head was nodding belief.
“I was walking through the snow when suddenly the street vanished; it became a stony mountain path. I felt light as air but my feet seemed heavy. That was the altitude. Then, stretching below me in a little valley, I saw the City-just as you have described your vision of it a few moments ago. And I knew that it had been revealed to me for a purpose. Once this realization dawned on me the mountains, the rugged outline of bare peaks and glaciers, softened. They seemed to close in and I was back on the doorstep of the Church of the Heavenly Message. But there, stretching away up the sidewalk, were my own tracks of a few minutes before! A few yards farther on they stopped. I had dematerialized when I reached that spot.”
Grindle said, “A wonderful experience. I’ve heard of such experiences. The holy men of Tibet claim to have them. But I never thought I’d ever meet a man who had reached such psychic heights.” His voice was humble and old and a little foolish. Then he started up from his chair.
A vague light had drifted past on the garden wall. It had the shape of a young girl.
The medium said, “You must relax. No tension. All receptivity -all love.”
Grindle settled back.
The sky clouded over; the darkness deepened. This time he did not stir but said hopefully, “I-I think I see something, out there by the sundial. Something moving-a spot of light.”
It was true. By the shadows at the base of the sundial was a spot of greenish light. Expanding slowly, it moved toward them, a cloud of glowing vapor taking form.
This time the industrialist sat up in spite of Stan’s reproving hand on his wrist.
The apparition drifted closer until they could see that it was a girl, dressed in shining garments which floated about her like a mist. Her dark hair was bound by a tiara in which seven bright jewels shone by their own cold light. She seemed to move a few inches above the ground, drifting toward them down a breath of night wind.
The believer’s voice had become a feeble, despairing whisper. “Dorrie-Could it be Dorrie?”
“My dear…” The materialized form spoke in a voice which seemed part of the garden and the night. “It’s Dorrie. But only for a moment. I can’t stay… it’s hard… hard to come back, darling.”
The Rev. Carlisle’s hand tightened on the older man’s arm; but the clergyman himself seemed to have passed into a deep trance.
The ghostly figure was fading. It receded, lost outline, sank into a single dot of green glow and then vanished.
“Dorrie-Dorrie-come back. Please come back. Please-” He was on his knees now by the sundial, where the light had disappeared. His broad stern in the tawny slacks was toward Stan, who could have planted a kick right in the middle of it.
Grindle knelt for several seconds, then got to his feet heavily and dropped back into the deck chair, covering his face with his hands.
Beside him the Rev. Carlisle stirred and sat up. “Was there a full materialization? I ‘went under’ very rapidly. I could feel the force leaving me as the light grew. What happened?”
“I-I saw an old friend.”
Molly was so happy she could cry. It had been a long time since they’d had anything like a holiday together. Stan had been acting so screwy she was afraid he was living on Queer Street. And then, all of a sudden, these three days-just driving anywhere, stopping at chicken-dinner shacks and roadhouses. Dancing and, in the daytime, going for a swim wherever a lake looked good. It was heaven; she got sad thinking about going back to the flat and starting all over again, doing nothing, just waiting for Stan to come home or something.
Stan was still awfully jumpy and sometimes you’d talk to him and he’d seem to be listening and then he’d say, “What was that, kid?” and you’d have to go through it all over again. But it was great to be getting around like this.
Stan looked nice in a bathing suit. That was something to be thankful for. Some guys were sweet guys but too skinny or with a pot. Stan was just right. She guessed they were both just right by the way other fellows ran their eyes over her chassis when she stepped out on a diving board. What hippos some girls her own age turned out to be!
The Great Stanton pulled himself out of the water and lay beside her on the float. They had the lake all to themselves except for some kids at the other end. He sat looking down at her and then leaned over and kissed her. Molly threw her arms around him. “Oh, honey, don’t ever let anything bust us up, honey! All I want is you, Stan.”
He slid his arm under her head. “Baby, how’d you like to do this every day in the year? Huh? Well, if this deal goes over we’re set. And every day is Christmas.”
Molly had a cold, sinking feeling inside her. He had said that so many times. Once it was “Get the house away from old Mrs. Peabody.” Always something. She didn’t really believe it any more.
He felt her go limp. “Molly! Molly! look at me! Honest to God, this is the thing I’ve been building toward ever since I started in this racket. I’ve run myself almost into the nut college building the guy. My foot’s never slipped yet. And if you think that guy is easy to handle-”
She pressed her face against his chest and began to cry. “Stan, why do we have to be this way? He seemed like a nice sort of old guy-from what I could tell in the dark up there. I felt like an awful heel, honest. I don’t mind taking some guy that thinks he’s wise and is trying to be a cheater himself-”
He held her tighter. “Molly, we’re in this deeper than you have any idea. That guy has millions. He has a whole private army. You ought to see that joint in Jersey. It’s like a fort. If we step on the flypaper from now on they’ll turn that bunch of private cops loose on us like a pack of bloodhounds. They’ll find us no matter where we scram to. We’ve got to go into it all the way. I’ve put him in touch with his girl that died when he was a kid in college. He wants to make it up to her somehow. Money doesn’t mean anything to that guy. He’s willing to give anything-just to get square with his conscience. He’s overboard on the spook dodge. He’s letting his business run itself. He’s living on Dream Street.”
Stan had straightened the girl until she sat on the edge of the float, her feet in the cool water. He took both her hands. “Baby, from now on it depends on you. Whether every day is Christmas and I can get my nerves back in shape and act like a human being-or whether the wolves start howling for our blood.”
Molly’s eyes were big now and Stan bored in.
“Now, look. This is what we’ve got to do.”
When she had heard it she sat for a moment with her hair falling over her face, looking down at her bare thighs and the bright yellow of the bathing suit. She ran her hands slowly from her crotch down to her knees. They felt cold and the water was cold around her feet; she raised them and drew them up, leaning her head on her knees, not looking at the man beside her.
“That’s how it is, kid. I’ll make it up to you. Honest to God, baby. Don’t you see-this is the only thing that can put us back together again?”
Suddenly she stood up, throwing her hair back. Her fingers trembled as she drew on her cap. Then, without looking at him, she dived from the float and set out for the dock. Stan was churning the water with his legs, trying to overtake her. She reached the dock and raced up the ladder with him close behind. When they got to the cabin he bolted the door.
Molly whipped off her cap and shook out her hair. Then she slipped the bathing suit down and left it on the floor in a sodden pile, stepping out of it. Stan watched her, his heart thumping with anxiety. Now.
She said, “Stan, take a good look. Make believe you never saw me undressed before. I mean it. Now then, tell me, if I-if I-do it-will I look any different? To you?”
He kissed her so hard that her lip began to bleed.
Lilith opened the door for him and they went into her office. She sat behind the desk, where the contents of a tray of star sapphires lay spread out on a square of black velvet. She tumbled them back into the tray and swung out the false drawer fronts on the right-hand side of the desk, revealing the steel door of a safe. She put the gems away and spun the dial twice, then closed the panel and took a cigarette from the box on her desk.
Stan held his lighter. “She’s hooked.”
“The virtuous Molly?”
“Sure. It took some selling but she’ll play ball. Now let’s lay out the moves from here on in. I planted the City of Spiritual Light with him just before the first full-form job in the garden up at his place. Next séance, we’ll start warming him up to the idea of kicking in some dough.”
Stan had brought with him a portfolio. He drew the tapes and opened it, laying an architect’s drawing before the woman who claimed to be a psychiatrist.
A bird’s-eye view of a dream city, clustered about a central tower which rose from the desert amid a circling park of palms.
“Very pretty, Reverend.”
“There’s more.” He lifted out the drawing. Beneath it was a Geodetic Survey map of an Arizona county. Drawn in red ink and carefully lettered was the location of the City.
Lilith nodded. “And this is the spot where you are going to take off into thin air? That’s very well thought out, darling.” She frowned, looking at the map. “Where are you going to hide the second car?”
“I’m going to leave it somewhere in this jerk town, marked over here.”
“No good, darling. It must be hidden out of town-somewhere in the desert. Let’s go through it again. You go out by train; you buy a car in Texas and drive into this town of Peñas, where you put it in a garage. Then you hire a car in Peñas. You drive your new car outside the town and park it. You walk back, pick up the hired car, go to your own car, tow it to the snot near the site of the City and hide it well and drive back to Peñas in the hired car. You come back here by train. Correct?”
“Right. Then when we get ready to blow I drive out there, telling him to follow me in a day or two. I drive my car out to the site of the City and just off the highway. I get out, walk a hundred yards straight into the sand, then backtrack to the car, and from there follow the rock to the highway; hike on up the highway and pull out the new car. And drive like hell back east. And I’ve disappeared in the middle of the desert. He’ll come along, following this map, and find the car. He’ll follow the footprints-and blam! Gone! And me carrying all that dough. Ain’t it a shame?”
She laughed softly at him over her cigarette. “It’s complicated, Stan. But you’ll probably be able to get away with it. I believe you could make a living selling spiritualism to other mediums.”
“Say!” He leaned forward, his eyes narrow, thinking quickly; then he relaxed and shook his head. “No go. It’s peanuts-they never have any real dough. Industry is the only place where dough is any more.”
She looked back at the idealized drawing of the City of Spiritual Light. “There’s one thing, Stan, that I wish you’d tell me.”
“Sure, baby.”
“How did you move that precision balance out at his factory?”
The Rev. Carlisle laughed. It was something he very seldom did; but now he laughed in a high key and was still bubbling when he spoke. “I’ll tell you, doctor, as soon as we’ve got the chump cleaned. It’s a promise.”
“Very well. It was probably something ridiculous.”
Stan changed the subject. “I’ll get busy this week and rent a shack jammed right up next to his estate.”
Dr. Lilith was filing a thumbnail. “Don’t be so dramatic, darling. Yonkers is good enough. I agree that it should be in Westchester. The City of Light location will spread any hue and cry out in the southwest. But I don’t think there will be any hue and cry. However, he may take the matter up with this Mr. Anderson. Don’t forget that he has some very shrewd men working for him. Mr. Anderson would try to outthink you. He knows he is dealing with an ingenious man. He would start his hunt for you on his own hook, and it would begin at the country place and fan out from there. No. Yonkers is neither here nor there.” She dropped the nail file back into the drawer. “How are you going to brush off the faithful Penelope?”
“Molly?” Stan was pacing the room, his hands in his pockets. “I’ll give her a couple of grand and tell her to meet me some place in Florida. All she needs is a few bucks and a race track to keep her happy. She’ll be in a daze as long as the dough holds out. If she wins a little she’ll forget the day of the month and everything else. When she’s broke she can go back to the carny and work the Ten-in-One. Or get a job as a hat check somewhere. She won’t starve.”
Lilith stood up and came over to him, stretching tailored gray arms up around his neck and giving him her mouth.
They swayed for a moment and Stan rubbed his cheek against the smooth hair. Then she pushed him away. “Run along, Reverend. I’ve a patient due in five minutes.”
When Grindle got to the church he found the Rev. Carlisle in his study upstairs. On the desk, spread out under the lamp, were letters with currency clipped to them. Stan picked up one which held a ten-dollar bill and read aloud: ‘ “I know the wonderful future which the City holds for us all in the line of a pooling of our spiritual forces. What a joy it will be when our friends and loved ones in spirit life can be with us as often as we wish. God bless you, Stanton Carlisle.’ Well, the rest of it is of no consequence.” He smiled at the ten-spot. “It’s very touching, Ezra, some of the letters. Many of them are from uneducated people-yet their faith is so pure and unselfish. The City will be a dream come true. They should thank Ramakrishna, though, for everything I do is done with the hand of that great spiritual leader on my shoulder.”
Grindle sat staring at the ember of his cigar. “I’ll do my share, Stanton. I’m pretty well fixed. I’ll do what I can. This idea of pooling all the spiritual power in one spot makes sense to me. Same as any business merger. But my part isn’t easy: I’ve built such a wall around myself that I can’t get out any more. They’re all devoted, loyal people. None better. But they won’t understand. I’ll have to think of some way…”
While the turntable revolved Stan leaned over the machine with a clothesbrush, keeping the blank record clear of acetate threads cut by the recording needle. Suddenly he raised the needle arm, tore the record from the turntable and slung it into a corner. “God damn it, kid, you’ve got to sound wistful. The dame and the old guy can be together forever, frigging like rabbits, only he’s got to help the church build this City. Now take it again. And get in there and sell it.”
Molly was almost crying. She turned back the pages of her script and leaned closer to the mike, watching Stan put on a new record blank.
I can’t act. Oh, golly, I’ve got to try!
She started to cry, forcing the words out between catches of her breath, struggling through it and winking so she could still read the script. Toward the end she was crying so hard she couldn’t see it at all and ad-libbed the rest. She was waiting any minute for Stan to blow up and bawl her out, but he let it ride.
When she was through he raised the recording arm. “That’s the stuff, kid-plenty of emotion. Let’s listen to it.”
The playback sounded awful, Molly thought. All full of weepy noises and gasps. But Stan was grinning. He nodded to her and when he had heard it all he said, “That’s the stuff, kid. That’ll shake him loose. You wait and see. You think that sounds corny? Forget it. The chump’s overboard. I could roll up my pants legs, throw a sheet over me, and he’d take me for his long lost love. But we’re going to need one circus to nail him to the cross.”
Moonlight struck through fern leaves in the conservatory; the rest of the church was in darkness. The minutes slid by-twenty of them by Stan’s luminous-dial watch. He shifted his feet and found the floor board by the organ.
A tinkle came from the trumpet lying on the lectern, across the Bible. Grindle leaned forward, clenching his fists.
The trumpet stirred, then floated in air, moonlight winking from its aluminum surface. The chump moaned, cupping one hand behind his ear so as not to miss a single syllable. But the voice came thin and clear, a little metallic.
“Spunk darling… this is Dorrie. I know you haven’t forgotten us, Spunk. I hope to materialize enough for you to touch me soon. It’s wonderful… that you are with us in building the City. We can be together there, darling. Really together. We will be. Believe that. I’m so glad that you are working with us at last. And don’t worry about Andy and the rest. Many of them will come to accept the truth of survival in time. Don’t try to convince them now. And don’t alarm them: you have some securities-some bonds-that they don’t know about. That is the way out, dear. And let no one know how much you give, for all must feel that the City is their very own. Give your part to Stanton, bless him. And don’t forget, darling… next time I come to you… I shall come as a bride.”
It was late when Stan pressed the buzzer outside the apartment. Lilith opened the door, frowning. “I don’t like your coming here so much, Stan. Somebody might see you.”
He said nothing but hurried in and threw his brief case on her desk, tugging at the straps. Lilith closed the Venetian blinds a little tighter.
From the case he dug a helter-skelter of papers, the faked letters with currency still attached, which Lilith gathered up, pulling off the cash. She emptied them into the fireplace and put a match to them.
Stan was feverishly smoothing out bills and arranging them in stacks. “The convincer boodle did the trick, babe. I took every cent I had in the sock-eleven grand.” He patted the piles of bills. “Jesus, what blood I’ve sweat to get it in this goddamned racket! But here’s the payoff.”
In two legal-sized brown envelopes were thick oblong packets. He drew them out and broke confining strips of paper. “There it is, baby. How many people ever see that much cash in all their lives? One hundred and fifty thousand! Look at it! Look at it! And the McCoy. I never saw one five-yard note before. God almighty, we’re lousy with ’em!”
The doctor was amused. “We’d better put them away, darling. That’s a lot of money for one person to carry in his pocket. You might spend it foolishly.”
While Stan gathered the crumpled bills of the convincer into a wad and slipped a rubber band around them Lilith assembled the “take” and placed it carefully back in the brown envelopes, sealing them. She swung open the dummy drawers of the desk and when she dialed the combination Stan automatically tried to get a peek but her shoulder was in the way. Lilith put the money away and spun the dial.
When she stood up the Rev. Carlisle was staring into the polished mahogany of the desktop, his face flushed. “Wounds of God! A hundred and fifty grand!”
She handed him a double brandy and poured one for herself. He took the glass from her hand and set it on the bookcase. Then he slid his arms around her roughly. “Baby, baby- God, this high class layout had me dizzy but I get it good and clear now. Baby, you’re nothing but a gonif and I love you. We’re a couple of hustlers, a pair of big-time thieves. How does it feel?”
He was grinning down at her, squeezing her ribs until they hurt. She took his wrists and loosened them a little, closing her eyes and raising her face to him. “You’re wonderful, darling, the way you read my mind.”
Dr. Lilith Ritter did not go to bed right away. After Carlisle had gone she sat smoking and drawing careful parallel lines on a scratch pad. Once she turned back to the file cabinet behind her and took out a folder identified only by a number. It contained a chart on graph paper, an idea with which she often played, an emotional barometric chart, marked with dates, showing a jagged rise and fall. It was an emotional diagram of Stanton Carlisle. She did not trust it entirely; but the curve had reached a high point, and on four other occasions such peaks had been followed by sudden drops into depression, instability, and black despair. Finally she put the folder away, undressed, and drew a tub of hot water into which she threw pine bath salts.
She lay in the water reading the financial section of the evening paper. Grindle Motors was off two points; it would go still lower before it started to rise again. Lilith’s smile, as she tossed the paper to the floor and snuggled deeper in the comforting, scented warmth, was the smile of a well-fed kitten.
With a twist of triumphant glee her mind drew pictures of her two sisters as she had seen them last: Mina, spare and virginal, still proud of a Phi Beta key after all these years of beating Latin into the heads of brats. And Gretel-still looking like a wax angel off a Tannenbaum, with half a lung left to breathe with and a positive Wassermann.
Old Fritz Ritter had kept a State Street saloon called “The Dutchman’s.” His daughter Lille smiled. “I must be part Swedish,” she said softly to a bar of pink soap, molded in the form of a lotus. “The middle way.”
For two days Ezra Grindle had dropped from sight. His legal staff, his chauffeur-bodyguard, and his private chief of police, Melvin Anderson, had conferred again and again as to where the boss might be, without getting anywhere. Anderson knew little about the Old Man’s activities lately and was afraid to stick a tail on him for fear he would find out about it. The Chief was cagy as hell. The lawyers learned that Grindle had not touched his checking accounts. Nothing, at least, had cleared. But he had been into one of his safe-deposit boxes. It was difficult to find out what securities the Chief had liquidated or how much. And where was he? He had left word: “I shall be away on business.”
The lawyers went over the will. If he had made a new one they would have drawn it. All his faithful employees were remembered, and the rest was distributed to his pet colleges, medical foundations, and homes for unwed mothers. They would just have to wait.
In a tiny bedroom, lit only by a skylight, on the top floor of the Church of the Heavenly Message, the great man sat with his glasses off and his dentures in a glass of water beside him. He was wearing the yellow robe of a Tibetan lama. On the pale green wall of his cell was painted in Sanskrit the word Aum, symbol of man’s eternal quest for spiritual At-One-ness with the All Soul of the Universe.
At intervals Grindle meditated on spiritual things but often he simply daydreamed in the cool quiet. The dreams took him back to the campus, and her lips when he kissed her for the first time. She wanted to see his college and he was showing her the buildings which stood there in the night, illumined, important. Afterward they strolled in Morningside Park, and he kissed her again. That was the first time she let him touch her breast…
He went over every detail. It was amazing what meditation could do. He remembered things he had forgotten for years. Only Dorrie’s face eluded him; he could not bring it back. He could recall the pattern of her skirt, that day at Coney Island, but not her face.
With the pleasure of pressing a sore tooth, he brought back the evening, walking on the Drive, when she told him what she had been afraid of; and now it was true. It seemed that no time had passed at all. His frantic inquiries for a doctor. He had exams the very time she was supposed to go; she went by herself. Afterwards, up in the room, she seemed all right, only shaky and depressed. What a hellish week that was! He had to put her out of his mind until exams were through. Then the next night-they told him she was in the hospital and he ran all the way over there and they wouldn’t let him in. And when he did get in Dorrie wouldn’t speak to him. It went around and around in his head-like a Tibetan prayer wheel. But it was slowing down. Soon it would stop and they would be Joined in Spirit.
The skylight had grown a darker blue. The Rev. Carlisle brought him a light supper and gave him further Spiritual Instruction. When the night had come there was a tap at the door and Carlisle entered, carrying with both hands a votive candle in a cup of ruby-red glass. “Let us go to the chapel.”
Grindle had never seen that room before. A large divan was piled with silk cushions and in an alcove was a couch covered with black velvet for the medium. The entire room was hung in folds of dark drapery. If there were any windows they were covered.
The clergyman led his disciple to the divan; taking his hand he pressed him back against the cushions. “You are at peace. Rest, rest.”
Grindle felt foggy and vague. The bowl of jasmine tea which he had been given for supper had seemed bitter. Now his head was swimming lightly and reality retreated to arm’s length.
The medium placed the votive candle in a sconce on the far wall; its flickering light deepened the shadows of that dead-black room and, on looking down, the bridegroom could barely make out the form of his own hands. His eyesight blurred.
Carlisle was chanting something which sounded like Sanskrit, then a brief prayer in English which reminded Grindle of the marriage service; but somehow the words refused to fit together in his mind.
In the alcove the medium lay back on the couch and the black curtains flowed together by their own power. Or was it the medium’s odylic force?
They waited.
From far away, from hundreds of miles it seemed, came the sound of wind, a great rushing of wind or the beating of giant wings. Then it died and there arose the soft, tinkling notes of a sitar.
Suddenly from the alcove which served as a cabinet came the trumpet voice of the control spirit, Ramakrishna, last of India’s saints, greatest of bhakti yogis, preacher of the love of God.
“Hari Aum! Greetings, my beloved new disciple. Prepare your mind for its juncture with the Spirit. On the seashore of endless worlds, as children meet, you will join for an instant the Life of Spirit. Love has made smooth your path-for all Love is but the Love of God. Aum.”
Ghostly music began again. From the curtains before the alcove a light flashed, then a sinuous coil of glowing vapor poured from between them, lying in a pool of mist close to the floor. It swelled and seemed to foam from the cabinet in a cascade. Its brilliance grew, until on looking down Grindle could see his own figure illumined by the cold flaming brilliance of the light. It rose now and pulsated, glowing bright and then dimming slightly. The air was filled with a mighty rhythm, like the heart of a titan, roaring and rushing.
The pool of luminous matter began to take form. It swayed as a cocoon might sway from a moth’s emerging. It became a cocoon, holding something dark in its center. Then it split and drew back toward the cabinet, revealing the form of a girl, lying on a bed of light, but illumined only by the stuff around her. She was naked, her head resting on one bent arm.
Grindle sank to his knees. “Dorrie-Dorrie-”
She opened her eyes, sat up and then rose, modestly drawing a film of glowing mist over her body. The old man groped forward awkwardly on his knees, reaching up to her. As he drew near, the luminous cloud fell back and vanished. The girl stood, white and tall, in the flicker of the votive candle across the room; and as she gazed down at him her hair fell over her face.
“Dorrie-my pet-my honey love-my bride…”
He picked her up in his arms, overjoyed at the complete materialization, at the lifelike smoothness of her body-she was so heartbreakingly earthly.
Inside the cabinet the Rev. Carlisle was busy packing yards of luminous-painted China silk back into the hem of the curtains. Once he put his eye to the opening and his lips drew back over his teeth. Why did people look so filthy and ridiculous to anyone watching? Christ!
The second time in his life he had seen it. Filth.
The bride and bridegroom were motionless now.
It was up to Molly to break away and get back to the cabinet. Stan turned the switch and the rhythmic, pounding heartbeat filled the room, growing louder. He tossed one end of the luminous silk through the curtains.
The quiet forms on the divan stirred, and Stan could see the big man burrowing his face between Molly’s breasts. “No- Dorrie-my own, my precious-I can’t let you go! Take me with you, Dorrie-I don’t want earth life without you…”
She struggled out of his arms; but the bridegroom seized her around the waist, rubbing his forehead against her belly.
Stan grabbed the aluminum trumpet. “Ezra-my beloved disciple-have courage. She must return to us. The force is growing weaker. In the City-”
“No! Dorrie-I must-I-once more…”
This time another voice answered him. It was not a spiritual voice. It was the voice of a panicky showgirl who has more than she can handle. “Hey, quit it, for God’s sake! Stan! Stan! Stan!”
Oh, bleeding wounds of Christ, the dumb, stupid bitch!
The Rev. Carlisle tore the curtains apart. Molly was twisting and kicking; the old man was like one possessed. In his pent-up soul the dam had broken, and the sedative Stan had loaded into his tea had worn off.
Grindle clutched the squirming girl until she was jerked from his hands.
“Stan! For God’s sake get me out of here! Get me out!”
Grindle stood paralyzed. For in the dim, red, flickering light he saw the face of his spiritual mentor, the Rev. Stanton Carlisle; it was snarling. Then a fist came up and landed on the chin of the spirit bride. She dropped to the floor, knees gaping obscenely.
Now the hideous face was shouting at Grindle himself. “You goddamned hypocrite! Forgiveness? All you wanted was a piece of ass!” Knuckles smashed his cheekbone and Grindle bounced back on the divan.
His brain had stopped working. He lay looking stupidly at the red, jumping light. A door opened somewhere and somebody ran out. He stared at the leaping red flame, not thinking, not living, just watching. He heard something stir near him but couldn’t turn his head. He heards sounds of crying and somebody say “Oh, good God,” and then the faltering slap of bare feet and a girl’s voice sobbing and a fumbling for a door and a door opening and staying open against a hallway where there was a dim yellow light but it all made no sense to Ezra Grindle and he preferred to watch the little flame in its ruby-red glass cup flickering and dancing up and down. He lay there a long time.
Below him the front door slammed once. But it didn’t seem to matter what happened. He groaned and turned his head.
One arm-his left one-numb. And all one side of his face frozen. He sat up and stared about him. This dark room-there had been a girl’s body. Dorrie’s. She was a bride. It was his wedding. The Rev. Carlisle-
Slowly he remembered things in little snatches. But was it the Rev. Carlisle who hit Dorrie? Or was it an evil spirit impersonating him?
Grindle stood up, having trouble balancing. Then he shuffled over to the door. One leg was numb. He was in the hallway of a house. There was a room upstairs.
He held onto the banister and took a step but he fell against the wall and sank to his knees. He crawled, step by step, dragging his left leg, which felt wooden and dead. He had to get upstairs for some reason-his clothes were upstairs-but everybody had gone-dematerialized.
He found the cell with the green walls and hauled himself to his feet, his breath whistling. What had happened? His clothes were still in the closet. Have to put them on. There was a wedding. There was a bride. Dorrie. They had been together, just as Stan had foretold. Stanton-Where was he? Why had Stanton left him this way?
Grindle was annoyed with Stanton. He struggled to get his trousers on and his shirt. Have to sit down and rest. Dorrie was there in spirit. Who else could it be but Dorrie, his Dorrie, come back again? Had she lived after all? And come back to him? A dream-?
But they had gone.
Glasses. Wallet. Keys. Cigar case.
He limped back into the hall. Stairs again, a mile of them going steeply down. Hold on. Have to hold on tight. Andy! Where was Andy and why had he let him get caught this way in a house with so many stairs and what had hurt his leg? With a sudden surge of anger Grindle wondered if he had been kidnapped. Shot? Slugged over the head? There were desperate men who might-the mob rule grows ever more menacing, even as we sit here tonight, gentlemen, enjoying our cigars and our…That was from a speech.
And the door to that black room open.
Grindle felt as if twenty years had fallen over him like a blanket. Twenty more years. He stood looking into the dark. There was a cabinet over there, and a single splash of green light still lay on the floor.
“Stanton! Dorrie! Stanton, where are you!”
Halfway across the room he stumbled and crawled the rest of the way to the pool of light. But it wasn’t moist and musky, like Dorrie. It felt like fabric.
“Stanton!”
Grindle struck a match and found a wall switch. The light revealed that the patch of luminous vapor was a piece of white silk sticking out from the bottom hem of the black curtains in the alcove.
But Stanton had struck Dorrie!
He drew aside the curtains. There was the couch, all right. Maybe Stanton had fallen behind it when the evil presence- this was Thursday? I’ve missed the board meeting. They would hold it without me; too important. I should have been there, to act as a sea anchor on Graingerford. But Russell would be there. Dependable man. But could Russell convince them by himself of the soundness of the colored-labor policy? The competition was doing it-it was a natural. Graingerford be damned.
On the floor by the couch lay a control box with several switches on its bakelite panel. Grindle turned one.
Above him began the faint, ghostly music of a sitar. Another turn of the switch and it stopped.
He sat on the medium’s couch for a moment, holding the box on his knees, the wire trailing from it underneath the black velvet cover toward the wall. A second switch produced the cosmic heartbeat and the rushing wind. Another-“Hari Aum!”
At the sound of Ramakrishna’s voice he snapped it off. The click of the switch seemed to turn on his own reason. In one jagged, searing flash he saw everything. The long build-up, the psychic aura, the barrage of suggestion, the manufactured miracles.
Dorrie- But how, in heaven’s name, did that sanctimonious devil find out about Dorrie? I’ve never spoken her name all these years-not even to Dr. Ritter. Even the doctor doesn’t know about Dorrie or how she died.
The villain must be genuinely psychic. Or some debased telepathic power. A fearful thought-such a black heart and such uncanny powers. Maybe Dr. Ritter can explain it.
Downstairs. Got to get downstairs. Telephone. In that devil’s office-
He made it.
“Andy? I’m perfectly all right-just can’t talk very plain. Something’s the matter with one side of my face. Probably neuralgia. Andy, for the Lord’s sake, stop fussing. I tell you I’m all right. It doesn’t matter where I am. Now keep quiet and listen. Get Dr. Samuels. Get him out of bed and have him up home when I get there. I’ll be there in two hours. I want a checkup. Yes, this evening. What time is it? Get Russell up there too. I’ve got to find out what happened at the meeting this morning.”
The voice at the other end of the wire was frantic. Grindle listened for a time and then said, “Never mind, Andy. I’ve just been-away.”
“One question, Chief. Are you with that spirit preacher?”
The Chief’s voice grew clearer. “Andy-I forbid you ever to mention that man’s name to me again! That’s an order. You and everyone else in the organization. Is that clear? And I forbid anyone to ask me where I’ve been. I know what I’m doing. This is final.”
“Okay, Chief. The curtain is down.”
He made two more calls. One was for a cab and the other was to Dr. Lilith Ritter. There was one chamber in his brain that wasn’t functioning yet. He didn’t dare open it until he was safely in Dr. Ritter’s office.
Molly had not stopped for clothes. She pulled on her shoes, threw a coat around her, grabbed her purse, and ran from that awful house. She ran all the way home.
In the flat Buster miaowed to her, but she gave him a quick pat. “Not now, sugar. Mamma has to scram. Oh, my God!”
She heaved a suitcase onto the bed and threw into it everything small and valuable she could see. Still crying in little bubbling starts, she drew on the first panties and bra that came out of a drawer; she got into the first dress she touched in the closet, shut the keyster, and put Buster in a big paper bag.
“Oh, my God, I’ve got to hurry.” Play dumb and give them an Irish name. “I’ve got to hurry, somewhere. Stan-oh, damn you, damn you, damn you, I don’t feel dirty! He was just as clean as you, you damn cheap hustler. Oh-Daddy-”
The hotel people were nice about Buster. She expected cops any minute but nothing happened. And the address she found in the Billboard was the right one. A reply to her telegram got back early the next morning:
SENDING DOUGH NEED GIRL SWORD CABINET ACT COME HOME SWEETHEART
ZEENA