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Chris from a number of difficulties and encumbrances encountered in the course of her travels, not the least of which had been caused by the redheaded actress' outspokenness. Chris had remembered her with affection over the years, and had looked her up on coming to Washington.
     
    "Hey, Shar," she asked, "which priests are coming?"
     
    "I'm not sure yet. I invited the president and the dean of the college, but I think that the president's sending an alternate. His secretary called me late this morning and said that he might have to go out of town."
     
    "Who's he sending?" Chris asked with guarded interest.
     
    "Let me see." Sharon rummaged through scraps of notes. "Yes, here it is, Chris. His assistant- Father Joseph Dyer."
     
    "You mean from the campus?"
     
    "Well, I'm not sure."
     
    "Oh, okay"
     
    She seemed disappointed.
     
    "Keep an eye on Burke tomorrow night," She instructed.
     
    "I will."
     
    "Where's Rags?"
     
    "Downstairs."
     
    "You know, maybe you should start to keep your typewriter there; don't you think? I mean, that way you can watch her when you're typing. Okay? I don't like her being alone so much."
     
    "Good idea."
     
    "Okay, later. Go home. Meditate. Play with horses."
     
    The planning and preparations at an end, Chris again found herself turning worried thoughts toward Regan. She tried to watch television. Could not concentrate. Felt uneasy. There was a strangeness in the house. Like settling stillness. Weighted dust.
     
    By midnight, all in the house were asleep.
     
    There were no disturbances. That night.
     
     
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    She greeted her guests in a lime-green hostess costume with long, belled sleeves and pants. Her shoes were comfortable. They reflected her hope far the evening.
     
    The first to arrive was Mary Jo Perrin, who came with Robert, her teen-age son. The last was pink-faced Father Dyer. He was young and diminutive, with fey eyes behind steel-rimmed spectacles. At the door, he apologized for his lateness. "Couldn't find the right necktie," he told Chris expressionlessly. For a moment, she stared at him blankly, then burst into laughter. Her day-long depression began to lift.
     
    The drinks did their work. By a quarter to ten, they were scattered about the living room eating their dinners in vibrant knots of conversation.
     
    Chris filled her plate from the steaming buffet and scanned the room for Mary Jo Perrin. There. On a sofa with Father Wagner, the Jesuit dean. Chris had spoken to him briefly. He had a bald, freckled scalp and a dry, soft manner. Chris drifted to the sofa and folded to the floor in front of the coffee table as the seeress chuckled with mirth.
     
    "Oh, come on, Mary Jo!" the dean said, smiling as he lifted a forkful of curry to his mouth.
     
    "Yeah, come on, Mary Jo," echoed Chris.
     
    "Oh, hi! Great curry!" said the dean.
     
    "Not too hot?"
     
    "Not at all; it's just right. Mary Jo has been telling me there used to be a Jesuit who was also a medium."
     
    "And he doesn't believe me!" chuckled the seeress.
     
    "Ah, distinguo," corrected the dean. "I just said it was hard to believe."
     
    "You mean medium medium?" asked Chris.
     
    "Why, of course," said Mary Jo. "Why, he even used to levitate!"
     
    "Oh, I do it every morning," said the Jesuit quietly.
     
    "You mean he held séances?" Chris asked Mrs. Perrin.
     
    "Well, yes," she answered. "He was very, very famous in the nineteenth century. In fact, he was probably the only spiritualist of his time who wasn't ever clearly convicted of fraud."
     
    "As I said, he wasn't a Jesuit," commented the dean.
     
    "Oh, my, but was he!" She laughed.: "When he turned twenty-two, he joined the Jesuits and promised not to work anymore as a medium, but they threw him out of France"--- she laughed even harder--- "right after a séance that he held at the Tuileries. Do you know what he did? In the middle of the séance he told the empress she was about to be touched by the hands of a spirit