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someone
comes in behind your back, and you know they're there before you
can see them. Know what I mean?"
    I nodded.
    Now Frances gazed over my shoulder with a faraway expression, as
if she were looking into infinity. "It's not an evil presence I
feel, it's good. I don't know how I know that, I just do. And it's
trying to say something, to communicate with me."
    "I suspect this presence is trying to communicate through you rather than with you, if what happened at the seance is
any indication. I'm certainly not much help in this matter. I wish
I could be, but I don't know the first thing about it."
    "You believe me, don't you? I mean, you said you heard the . . .
the voice that came out of me. Surely that must be why Mrs. Locke
has summoned me, don't you think so, Fremont? How can I not
go?"
    "Yes . . ."I said slowly, "it's very tempting. But are you sure
you can get away? What makes you think tomorrow will be any
different from today? Or did you think to run away again in
dressing gown and slicker?"
    "No. I will be very, very good and contrite tonight. I'll
promise anything. And then Jeremy will go to work as usual tomorrow
morning and all will be well. That is, if you can come for me in
your car? Will you, Fremont? Oh, say that you will!"
    I confess I did not like it. I was uncomfortable, and not
because Michael had told me to be wary of Frances, and not to get
between her and her husband. It was something else I could not
quite define, some nascent sense that warned of something wrong.
But it was all rather vague. In the end I could not deny help to a
friend, and a repressed friend, at that.
    "I will come for you," I said. "I'll manage it somehow."
    "Oh, thank you!" Frances gushed.
    I frowned at her effusiveness and raised a finger to my lips in
that universal gesture for silence. "It will be easier for me if
Michael knows nothing of this," I said quietly. "Now, can you get
back to your house on your own? If I drive you, I'll have to tell
him I'm going out, and I'd rather not."
    "I don't want to cause trouble for you, too, Fremont. I never
thought he might object," Frances whispered, reaching for my hand
and squeezing it tightly.
    "It's all right," I hastened to assure her, "my life is very
much my own, but the car belongs to him. That's all."
    "Oh, I see." She giggled, then covered her mouth. I smiled in
return-she was irrepressible. "Well, then," she said, "we shall do
fine, I'm sure. Until tomorrow then?"
    I nodded. "Until tomorrow."
    I stayed on my own again that night, which caused Michael to
raise a dark eyebrow, but no more than that. If he had heard me and
Frances talking in the kitchen, he said nothing of it, for which I
was grateful, because I really did not want to discuss it. We were
not in agreement, and that was that.
    By morning I had invented a dental appointment for myself, which
necessitated my taking the Maxwell and Michael's watching the
office for an hour or so. While I was not entirely happy with this
subterfuge, on the other hand I did not want him to be concerned
about me either. What harm could possibly come of my driving a
friend a few blocks in broad daylight, at ten o'clock in the
morning, in a perfectly respectable part of town? Though to be
honest, it was a gloomy, gray sort of day, so "broad daylight" did
not precisely apply.
    I drove right up under the porte cochere, as Frances had
suggested. She was waiting just inside the door, and in only a
matter of seconds she had seated herself beside me in the auto and
we were off for Octavia Street.
    "You're quite nicely dressed this morning," I observed, "so may
I assume you had no further problem with your husband?" She did
look lovely, like a whiff of spring in a pale green suit of fine
wool with a fitted, waist-length jacket; the sleeves, the collar,
and the skirt were trimmed with narrow grosgrain ribbon in a darker
green. Wider ribbon of the same type made a flat bow at the back of
her upswept hair.
    "You are looking well yourself, Fremont," she