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"No," I said aloud, "this train of thought will not do!" I
finished dressing, took a last look in the mirror, pinched my
cheeks to give them color, and headed downstairs. As I went, I
reminded myself that, even should the worst happen and Michael grow
tired of me, I would be no worse off than I had been before
accepting his proposal that we make a partnership of our lives and
our work. Actually, I should be better off for the excellent
training Michael was giving me-soon I should be able to snoop and
spy and detect along with the best of the professionals. And of
course I still had my typewriter.

I trailed my hand over that dear machine as I passed the desk
where I kept the records and typed up the reports. When my training
period was over, and we had sufficient business to warrant it, we
would hire a secretary. But for the moment I served in that
capacity as well as junior investigator. Wish was senior
investigator. Michael preferred to remain behind the scenes, in his
advisory capacity.

The downstairs of my side of the double house constituted
J&K's office suite. The front parlor was for reception and
initial interviews, the dining room provided a conference room, the
morning or breakfast room had become Michael's private sanctum; but
the kitchen was still a kitchen and that was where all three of
us-Michael, Wish, and I-spent most of our time. The hands of the
big Regulator clock on the kitchen wall clicked into the eight
o'clock position as I spooned ground coffee into the percolator,
and I thought,
In half an hour Wish will be along, and I will
ask him what he knows about Mr. McFadden, Frances's
husband.

"Jeremy McFadden," Wish Stephenson said, then paused to blow
across the top of his coffee cup, "lives in one of those big houses
over thataway a few blocks." He waved his long, lanky arm vaguely
in the direction of Van Ness Avenue.

"I know where they live, Wish," I said impatiently. "I want to
know more about the man himself. What he's like. What he does for a
living, who his friends are, that kind of thing."
And why his
wife is so afraid of him,
I added silently.

There was a part of the seance story that I had not told Michael
the previous night. With some help from the redoubtable Patrick,
Frances had come out of her trance shortly after we had arranged
her, sitting upright, in the passenger seat of Michael's Maxwell
automobile. She had seemed fine, yet I'd insisted on accompanying
her into her house for a restorative cup of tea. I wanted to be
sure she was completely well before going on my way. And she had
seemed to be, aside from the curious fact that she could not
remember anything about the medium's barking, or her own odd
utterance of "Lazarus, come away from there
¹
." I was, of
course, dying to know more about this Lazarus. In my imagination I
saw him shrouded, emerging from the grave; but the words associated
with that vision were "Come forth!" not "Come away."

At any rate, Frances became quite animated as we drank our tea.
Her cheeks regained their color and her eyes their usual spark. I
was reassured, until we heard the sound of a door-a heavy one,
probably the front-opening, followed by ponderous footsteps in the
hall, at which point all color drained from my friend's face. She
said, "Oh no!" in a strangled voice, shoved her tea-the cup
rattling in its saucer-onto the table, grabbed my arm in a hard
grip, and pulled me close.

"He wasn't supposed to be back for hours! You mustn't tell him
where we've been," she said in a terrified whisper. "He can't know,
he must never know I left the house after dark!"

Frances stood up just as those heavy steps reached the arched
entry to the parlor where we sat. Before my very eyes I watched a
remarkable transformation in her countenance as she composed
herself. Though her skin remained pale, her face smoothed out into
placidity, she lifted her chin and turned as she clasped her hands
together in front of her to stop their trembling. "Mr. McFadden,"
she said formally to her husband, and as I rose I wondered if she
always called him thus, "this is my friend Mrs. Jones, who has
stopped by on an errand of mercy."

"How do," Mr. McFadden replied abruptly, snapping his head up
and down in a nod. He wore full whiskers that covered heavy jowls,
in a now outmoded style once made popular by the younger
Vanderbilts. He was an enormous figure, large without being fat; I
thought him extremely unattractive. He looked, very simply, like a
mean man. And he was clearly skeptical of me. His eyes roamed
rudely over my body and he said, "A little late, isn't it, to be
doing errands of any kind." It was a pronouncement, not a question,
and he went on: "I assume your husband knows your whereabouts,
madam."

"Of course," I replied, taking a kind of prickly pleasure in the
opportunity for mendacity. "My husband is fully supportive of all
my charitable endeavors."

"The vehicle at the curb would be yours, then." He said
"vehicle" with disdain, as if poor Max were not at all good enough
for a McFadden's high standards.

"If you mean the Maxwell, then yes, it is ours. My husband's and
mine." I could imagine how droll Michael would find this
conversation, with me repeatedly referring to him as my husband. I
was rather enjoying it myself.

"And the charity you support, which requires you to be out so
late of an evening, what would that be?"

"Why, the Widows and Orphans of Deceased Seafarers, of course,"
I said, making one up on the spot. "Surely you've heard of our
campaign?"

"Can't say as I have, no." The enormous man rocked forward onto
the balls of his feet, leaning toward me in a manner I found rather
threatening, although I was separated from him by a distance of
several feet.

Frances was suddenly at my side, tugging my arm. "Mrs. Jones was
just leaving. I've told her I'm overcommitted to my own charities
at the moment. If you'll excuse me, Mr. McFadden, while I accompany
her to the door?"

And with that, Frances had guided me deftly around her husband
and into the hall. Once there, she'd kept grimly on toward the door
and had refused to answer any of my whispered questions, only
shaking her head. In nothing flat, I had found myself outside.

Now Wish Stephenson said, "I can look up his club membership if
you want me to. Living in a house like that, he must have a club.
Then I'd go round and talk to the club help, find out all about him
that way."

From behind the pages of
The Chronicle,
Michael said, "No
need for that, Wish. Jeremy McFadden belongs to the Parnassus Club,
like his daddy before him. Daddy was a land speculator. Jeremy does
his speculating in the stock market. He's seldom at his club, so it
would do you no good to inquire there. Fremont"- he lowered the
paper so that he could peer over it-"why do you want to know?"

"Because," I said, "his wife is afraid of him."

"Ah," said Michael, nodding his head, as if that explained
everything, and then he retreated behind the newspaper again.

I turned to Wish. "It wouldn't do any harm, I suppose-that is,
if you just happened to be passing by the Parnassus Club-if you
were to slip in the back door and ask a question or two? Even if
he's seldom there, someone might know something. Who knows, the
cook could be his old nursemaid."

Michael snorted.

I pretended I hadn't heard, going on: "You'll never know if you
don't ask. But don't go out of your way, Wish. This isn't a real
investigation, not a paid inquiry or anything. Just my own
curiosity, that's all."

Wish grinned. He has an open, bony yet sensitive face and a wide
mouth that seems even wider when he smiles. "I'd sooner go out of
my way for you, Fremont, than for anybody rich enough to hire us,
and that's a fact! Sure I'll see what I can do for you."

Michael snorted again.

I buttered another muffin and winked at Wish, who blushed a bit
and gulped down the rest of his coffee. With Michael, the two of us
were often like a couple of kids plotting mischief against a
favorite teacher. Not that we'd ever actually
do
anything .
. .

"Well," Wish said, pushing back from the table, "I'm off."

"You still working that same case?" Michael lowered the paper to
his lap.

"Yeah. Checking the cemeteries now. I don't think we'll ever
find that poor man's daughter. I don't feel good about continuing
to take his money, and that's a fact, but he says leave no stone
unturned. Gotten down to the tombstones now." Wish shook his head
dolefully.

"If that's what he wants," I said softly. The client had come to
San Francisco from up in the northern part of the state, around
Eureka, in search of his married daughter who had just stopped
writing home about a year ago. He claimed he'd had one letter from
her after the earthquake, saying she and her husband had survived,
but nothing since. Missing people were still very hard to trace,
because so many had simply left; and though no one talked openly
about it, there had been bones recovered from the ashes of the
great fire that would likely remain forever unidentified.

"Yeah, well," Wish said, "I'm planning to finish up today. I
can't stand much more of it myself. Stopping by the Parnassus will
make a nice diversion, Fremont. See you later, Michael."

"Right," Michael said, returning to his paper.

"You're unusually taciturn this morning," I commented, licking
butter from my fingers.

Michael said nothing until we heard the front door close behind
Wish; there is a little bell on that door, so it is easy to tell
when someone goes in or out. I affixed the bell myself and am most
fond of it, because it reminds me of one I had on the door of my
first office, on Sacramento Street, some three years ago. As the
bell's silvery tone subsided, Michael carefully folded the
newspaper in half, and then by half again, and set it precisely on
the table beside his plate.

"What?" I asked, already suspicious. I knew that look in his
eye. It was a superior,
I-Know-More-About-This-Than-You-Could-Ever-Hope-To sort of
look.

"You think your friend is afraid of her husband."

"I
know
she is
¹
."

"She confided this to you?"

"She didn't have to. I could tell!" I said hotly. "So would you
have been able to tell, if you'd been there. And besides, she did
say that he mustn't ever know that she'd gone out of their house
after dark. Imagine that! Even though we were together, properly
chaperoning each other, and it was early in the evening."

"But you did go to a seance. Not, for example, to the
opera."

My cheeks were burning. I knew he had a point there, but still
my chin went up and I said: "So?"

Michael wore his most serious face. He is of Russian descent,
with almost black, silver-shot hair and beard, high cheekbones, a
straight nose, eyes that are sometimes blue and sometimes gray,
depending, I think, on his inner weather, and a most expressive
mouth. His eyes at the moment were slate gray and his lips formed
an uncompromising line. Yet, to my surprise, he did not meet me
head on, but rather asked a sidewise question. "Where, again, did
you first meet Frances McFadden?"

"At the little library on Green Street. We are both frequent
patrons. We grew to recognize one another, and so one day last
week, as we were leaving the library at the same time, I invited
her to accompany me to that new tea shop over on Van Ness. Frances
and I are most compatible, Michael."

Indeed, Frances and I had talked in a way that a woman may only
talk to another woman, deeply and confidingly. Therefore I knew she
had come from modest circumstances to marry a wealthy man; and she
knew about my flight from respectability in Boston to freedom in
San Francisco, and that I did not intend to compromise my freedom
by marrying anyone. And then I'd mentioned my arrangement with
Michael. Of course I'd feared rejection all the while I was telling
her the truth, but she had not rejected me. Rather the opposite:
Frances had been full of understanding and admiration. For such a
friend I would do much, whether Michael liked it or not.

"Your father must be an unusual man,'' Michael said, still
moving sideways.

"I don't quite take your point," I said, though he hadn't made
one yet.

"My point is this: It is not unusual for a man to be unhappy if
his wife goes out without him, particularly after dark. And most
men would be unhappy in the extreme to find out that their wives
were becoming involved in Spiritualist practices."

"Why is that, why 'in the extreme,' Michael?"

"Because the vast predominance of mediums are female. They seem
to have certain, ah, powers. It smacks, my dear Fremont, of
witchcraft. And anything that smacks of witchcraft makes us men
uncomfortable. Most women too, I daresay."

"I thought that was what you'd say." I nodded impatiently. "But
I still don't understand. Surely you don't expect me to pay
attention to something just because it's the opinion of most
people?"

Michael chuckled; for just a moment his eyes flashed, but then
he sobered again. And perhaps by contrast to the moment of
jocularity, he seemed even more somber than before. "Fremont, I do
not think it's a good idea for you to come between a man and his
wife," he said, "and I am deeply concerned. Jeremy McFadden's
father was a rough character, and I have no reason to believe
Jeremy
is not equally rough himself. If you continue to
befriend Frances, it had better be on terms that are acceptable to
her husband."

I arched my brows and wriggled my toes, just itching to tap my
foot under the table, but I did not. I said: "Or else . . .
what?"